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TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 18 – Anchoring (If It’s Important, It Will Wait)
Hi, it’s Megan. This is today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy. And this is the first Notes from Dunfanaghy where I actually am in Dunfanaghy.
I started off the morning in Derry, and I was feeling a bit stressed out because I was running behind time, and I have a long list of work I need to do, and the emails I need to respond to, and messages I need to respond to. And I was concerned that I missed the notes from Dunfanaghy on Friday, because I was travelling to Ireland alone with the kids, and it was an epic journey, all kinds of things went wrong, we eventually made it home in the middle of the night, and the kids have been a bit unwell, and I’ve been a bit unwell. And so I was just feeling under pressure and behind.
And I was coming to Dunfanaghy today — I’m here this week to write — and literally, as I came over the mountaintop at Letterkenny, shortly after that is the first time you get a glimpse of Muckish, which is the mountain that kind of sits above Dunfanaghy. And from that part of the road on, the landscape starts to open up, and I start to see all the familiar features and places and all of that. And I just started to breathe a bit deeper, and I started to kind of remember, oh, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine, I’ll get to my to-do list, there is no rush.
So I’m now sitting at Horn Head, staring at the sea cliffs. If I look along the coastline to the east-northeast, I’m looking along the headlands of the coastline all the way along to Malin Head, which is the most northerly point in Ireland. I can’t quite see it today. I’m just on the island of Inishtrahull, just off Malin Head — those are the oldest rocks in Ireland, they’re over one and a half billion years old. And then if I look to the north, there’s nothing but ocean — there’s nothing but 2,000-plus miles of sea until you get to the North Pole.
That’s one of the things I love about this place. Like, all of that just slows me down, and it puts me back in touch with — hang on, what is the reality of things here, does it matter if I get to that email instantly, can it wait a few hours, can it wait a day, like, all of that is okay.
And I think, so I was down here yesterday as well with the kids and some family, and I’m kind of commuting up and down, my parents are looking after the kids for me this week while I work. And last night on the way home, it was like quarter past ten, but it was still light, and I took — I was travelling just with my daughter, who’s six — and the sea was really ferocious, so I took her down to the pier, the water was breaking over the breakwater at the pier, it’s very spectacular.
So I took her down, and she asked a question about the boats. There’s a little small harbour, and there’s some boats moored just in the open harbour, and she asked, like, when the water’s this rough, how do the boats stay there? And I was explaining that, I think this is how it works, they’re anchored, right — well, they’re attached to mooring buoys, and the mooring buoys are anchored. And so the heavy anchor sinks into the sand, and there’s heavy chains, and that holds it in place. And she said that anchoring must be really, really deep in the sand to keep those boats in place when the water’s this rough.
And I was thinking about that as I was coming down the road today as well. Because as I pass, you know, as I start to see these landmarks, whether it’s the mountain, or I pass particular bends in the road where I have memories, it’s like — as I make that journey, I’m kind of conjuring my ancestors, I’m conjuring my past at the same time. Like, different points along the road, I’m conjuring memories of different family members or different moments from my life. You know, passing the old abandoned schoolhouse where, whenever I was three, my Granda stopped — he took me to Dunfanaghy, and we stopped and we had a little picnic there, and I thought it was the greatest day of my life, it’s one of my earliest memories.
So there are all of these little spots along the road, and today, as I was driving down, I was thinking about Maeve’s question yesterday about the anchor — you know, it’s deep in the sand, and it can hold you in place in very tumultuous waters. And there’s something about — let me see if I can articulate it — like, I could almost feel that anchor sinking into the seabed today as I was driving down. Like, there’s something about the memories, there’s something about knowing that this road I’m driving down, up and down repeatedly this week between Derry and Dunfanaghy, like, my family have been making that journey for 80-odd years.
Thinking about my grandfather making that journey on a bicycle, and his stories about trying to hold on to the back of lorries up hills to get a lift up the hill. There is something about knowing that I am on this well-beaten path, and knowing stories from this part of the world that extend way beyond my lifetime, that gives me that anchored experience. I can kind of feel myself sinking into the seabed, and it doesn’t matter how rough the waters are on the surface of my life — when I come back to this place, I am held in place by all of these different things, and my time horizon expands.
So I’m no longer thinking about the urgency of what I need to do today, or what needs to happen this week, or even this year. Immediately I’m thinking about decades. I’m thinking about my family. I’m thinking about my grandparents, I’m thinking about their lifetimes. And then I’m looking at the rocks, I’m thinking about millions of years and billions of years. And just the expanse of time and space here, it just feels so good — I almost don’t know how to describe it or how to put it in words, but it feels right, and it feels good.
And so I guess, like, what this note, what this rambling, is really about today is — as I was coming down the road today, what I kept thinking was, if it’s important, it will wait. You know, so, I’m here to write, I’m behind on my writing schedule, obviously I’m behind on everything, who isn’t. And just this message of, if it’s important, it will wait.
And I think there is a paradox, because what I also have experienced with my work is that sometimes there is this great sense of urgency, and it’s like, yeah, this is the important work, this is what I’m supposed to do, and sometimes I think we have to listen to that urgency, and we have to fight through the obstacles and the resistance that appear in response to that, and all of that, and sometimes that is the right thing to do. But then also sometimes the right thing to do is to just surrender to the reality of your life right now, and if something feels really hard, maybe that’s because you’re supposed to just go easy, and ease off, and wait until the time is right, and trust that if it is important, it will wait.
Like, there is no — I really don’t think that there is a way that you can screw up your real work, or that you can miss your real work. Like, it might just take a different form if you engage with it at a different time in your life, but I don’t think you can miss it. It will wait for you. It’s not going anywhere.
And so, you know, with the retreat at the end of September, there’s a couple of spaces left. And, I think, my hope for who shows up at the retreat are the people who feel drawn to it, and it feels like, yeah, this is the right time for me, this makes sense for me, I feel called to do this thing, and to dive deeper into my work in this place now.
But I also just want to say that if you feel like you really want to do it, and you are really drawn to it, but at the same time there are all of these reasons why it doesn’t make sense for you right now, that’s fine. And, like, this is not a “if you don’t come you’ll miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime thing,” I don’t really believe in that. Like, there’s no one route into your work, there’s no — I do believe this is a magical place, but there’s no one magical place, there’s no one magical workshop, there’s no one magical course. There’s only the thing that is right for you in this moment.
And so if it’s right for you and it makes sense, great. If it doesn’t make sense right now, that’s totally okay, you’re not missing anything. Whatever is important for you in your work, whatever insights are important for you, they will wait, they will wait until they find a route to you. And there is an infinite number of routes that they can find to you, and there’s an infinite number of experiences that you can have that will bring those insights.
And so I think the message of this note is: there’s no rush, the timing will always be right. Sometimes people’s rhythms are different, sometimes it’s time to go fast, sometimes it’s time to go slow, sometimes it’s time to pause completely. And all of that is okay. We are operating on a geological timescale. And everything’s okay. We can’t miss anything.
Thanks for listening. So, I don’t know if I’ve said at any point, my intention was to do 21 of these, which I think means that this week is the last of them — I think this is maybe number 18, I need to check. So this will be the last week of these Notes from Dunfanaghy. And it feels very apt that I’m in Dunfanaghy this week, so these last few will come live from Dunfanaghy.
Thank you for listening. See you tomorrow.