The Campbell Academy Blog (52)

Letting it happen (or not clenching)

Buddhists talk about the process of clenching.

I think about this a lot.

Clenching is when you try to hold on to an experience that you're having because it's good and, in the process, don't really enjoy the experience you're having because you're too busy worrying that the experience will end and you won't be able to enjoy it anymore and therefore you clench.

I can associate with that, but I can also attest to the fact that with practise, you can just let it happen.

I remember really coming across this phenomenon during the first time my football team was in the Cup final as little boys.

It was 0-0; in fact, the game finished 0-0, and so did extra time, and so it went to penalties, and I was almost beside myself with excitement and nerves and anxiety until I told myself to shut the fuck up and I just watched.

I never celebrated or commiserated; I just watched what was going on, and my memory of that day is so crystal clear, even the memory of the last penalty going in after we had been 3-0 down in the penalty shootout, only to win in sudden death.

I remember it all because I somehow managed to untangle myself from it and not clench.

And so this weekend, I have another (yes, yet another) extraordinary work experience on the go, and I'll write about it later after it's done because I don't really like to write about them too much as they're happening, but I intend to let it happen to me.

I am not chasing.

I am unclenching.

The fact that I get to do these things with work is extraordinary enough without ever trying to make them into something they're not.

This year, with my family, we will travel to Glastonbury, and Coldplay will headline on the Saturday night.

I will not clench during that; I will suck in every single piece of that, the way I did in 1999, 25 years ago, when Alison and I were just newly married, and we went to the V Festival, and we saw Stereophonics as the sun went down.

Like the Cup final, I remember almost everything about that Stereophonics gig because I had no expectations of what would happen, and I'd just let it happen.

I am not that guy who videos a concert because I think that concentrating on videoing the concert is the ultimate form of clenching.

You just video the concert in your mind, and then it's there. If you don't remember it, that's ok, but you don't experience it if you are trying to collect it.

Memories are not for collecting.

Memories are for having.