What activities do you lose yourself in?
I lose myself in writing, walking, and sport, and each of them impacts me in a different way.
Writing often gets hold of me. It can be an idea, a life story, a poem, a short story. Something catches, and once it does I can lose all track of time. I sit down meaning only to follow a thought for a little while and then look up to find that the afternoon has slipped by without knowing. I love that about writing, the way it draws me past the surface of things. In writing, I lose myself in imagination and meaning. I begin with words, but often I end with something more than words. I end having seen something more clearly, or felt something more deeply, or discovered that the act of shaping a thought has quietly been shaping me.
Walking does something similar, though it asks it differently. Sometimes it is bushwalking. Sometimes it is just walking through the streets. Either way, once I am moving, my mind begins to move too. Connections form. Questions arise. Activity and reflection have always gone together for me. It is often while walking that something half-formed begins to take shape, and by the time I return home I feel the need to write, as though the walk has been carrying not only my body but an idea that now wants to be put into words.
Sport has its own kind of power. Cricket, football, volleyball—it almost does not matter which game. I love the feeling of being taken right into it. There is something enthralling about play when it has your full attention. The game becomes its own small world, complete in itself. For that stretch of time, the rest of life fades to the edges. In sport, I lose myself in play and presence. There is only the movement, the contest, the anticipation, the fun, the strange delight of being fully absorbed in something with others.
All three involve a kind of flow, but each expresses it differently. Writing carries me into imagination and meaning. Walking carries me into movement and reflection. Sport carries me into play and presence. They are not the same experience, but they belong together. Each one gathers me so fully that time falls away. Each one takes me out of myself for a while. And each one, in its own way, returns me more fully to who I am.
The Afterword 
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