Matt Hopwood - A Human Love Story: Journeys to the Heart

A Human Love Story

Journeys to the Heart

Matt Hopwood

First published in 2018 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright Matt Hopwood 2018

Foreword copyright Clare Balding 2018

The moral right of Matt Hopwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 0 8579 0983 1

British Library

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in Bembo by Mark Blackadder

Printed and bound by PNB Print, Latvia

To Petra, my love,

for all who share your stories

This is a beautiful collection of everything we feel and dont feel what we say and cant say. It is a delicately woven tapestry of human life, collected by a stranger who offered an ear to listen without judgement and who has the depth of soul to interpret the complicated layers of love.

I have walked with Matt, enjoyed his company hugely and found myself wanting to tell him the secrets of my heart. He has an uncanny and admirable ability to make people want to divulge truths they may never have revealed to anyone and, in sharing them so discreetly in this book, he allows us all to learn more about the thing that makes each of our lives unique our experience and understanding of love.

Clare Balding

Five Hundred Miles on Foot through Scotland

Im not too sure where the idea of journeying by foot through Scotland emerged from. It continued on from a previous journey I had made, from Avebury in Wiltshire to Lindisfarne on the Northumberland coast, which had connected sacred places in the landscape of Britain, so it seemed natural to set off for Scotland from Lindisfarne and head for Callanish on the Isle of Lewis as a route through the land from the North Sea to the Atlantic. I wanted to cross a frontier, to experience the cultural shift from one perceived nation to another. I wanted to tell the stories of folk from both sides of that imagined border and see how the stories morphed and changed as I made my way westwards and then north. I wanted to experience Scotland while decisions about sovereignty, ownership and belonging were being explored.

Along the way I sought hospitality, a bed for the night, food, shelter, a welcome. I moved as a stranger through the land looking for connection, searching out the narratives that shape this part of the world. As ever, I sought to connect with people through the stories of their heart those stories of love that have formed their human experience profoundly. I met with folk on the path, in the pub, by the shore, in the city and in the villages. We spent time listening to each others stories, opening up a little, shedding some tears, testing our vulnerabilities, exploring our truths.

I found Scotland to be the place I had longed for it to be a place of passion and colour, of people and landscapes that cascade the senses and move the spirit. Earth, sky and sea shaped my movements through the land, and Scotland stays in my memory now as a place of sacred union, where the hard lines dissolve a little and the beauty and spirit of the earth finds an essential space.

Here is a collection of the human love stories, heard and shared on this 500-mile journey through Scotland in the months of March and April. They are not perfect: but they are perfect. They do not resolve, begin or end as fictional stories might. They start where we found ourselves meeting on that day with those experiences we were going through at the time. They meander and sometimes end abruptly. Each story reflects an experience of love and connection. They explore our desires to be heard and seen and touched and wanted our desire to belong. They express the importance of home, of welcome and connection. They are sad, joyful, ecstatic, hard, glorious, life-long and momentary. They are all of our stories for they explore the human heart, our human condition. And, though I walked through Scotland, the essence of these stories could have been heard anywhere around the world because, in the end, we are all lovers and hermits, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, migrants and refugees. We are all lost and all found.

To hear someone deeply is one of the greatest gifts you can offer a person. It is the essential act of love. In that exchange, you allow a person to be recognised, to be noticed, to be seen. It is an act of profound compassion. It is a love story in itself.

As I walked five hundred miles through Scotland, I sought to provide spaces where people could be deeply heard. In these spaces, people were allowed to be vulnerable, to open out and share anything and everything. Together we nurtured a heart space, a place for loving interaction and compassionate understanding.

Through sharing stories of love and connection, people give something of themselves to their listener, allowing themselves to be seen, to be understood, to be acknowledged. In this listening space, people have the opportunity to heal, to learn, to grow.

In allowing these stories to be recorded, to be written and shared around the world, the people who feature in this book are extending that conversation, that loving dialogue. This book provides a space where understanding across nations and cultures can grow. Fear can subside, the stranger can become more familiar. Our human experience becomes a shared endeavour. We are no longer alone because we can be understood and can understand others.

In its most pure form, I believe that hearing another person deeply and compassionately is a sacred act. The essential loving act, it is love made and given.

It doesnt matter what path you walk, what matters is the heart you walk it in

Alastair McIntosh

Human beings need stories

Paul Auster

The journey begins, through the sea and the mud, as the tide ebbs and the land emerges from the wash. After walking some time I come to a standstill by the waters edge in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Further on, a day from here, perhaps, I will cross that invisible line into a different land, into Scotland. The path stretches out before me. The light loosens its grip. The harbour moves restlessly.

We met when I went to work in a kibbutz in Israel. Id been working in London, working as a waitress in a caf, and I was waiting to go to university in London. And I didnt have anything to do for the summer and I thought Id go to a kibbutz. I didnt even know where Israel was and I didnt know what a kibbutz was, but it was somewhere for me to go because I had no one to go on holiday with. I thought, That sounds nice itll be warm, something to do. I arrived in Tel Aviv airport I didnt know what I was doing. I spoke to a guy at the airport who looked like he knew what he was doing and he told me what buses to take. It was all quite random, really. I had to take a bus and get off at a junction and then walk and wait for a lift. And it was back in the early eighties, when many young people, and also the soldiers, travelled around by hitching. So thats what I did. Eventually this guy rolled by. I was just standing there with my thumb out and he was going to the kibbutz, so he took me along.