Finding your purpose

Alice Warrander survived a life-threatening accident that changed her life. After partially recovering, she decided to embark on a pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome to find purpose and gratitude. Along her journey, she experienced kindness from strangers and discovered a new outlook on life. Alice's near-death experience influenced her decision, but anyone can find meaning and purpose through challenges. Taking time for reflection and embracing new experiences can lead to transformative moments. Alice's pilgrimage helped her find her calling as an artist and writer. Her story shows that challenges can lead to life-changing transformations. Hello, Jeremy Deitch here, and welcome to the Insight Post for the 19th of April 2023, Finding Your Purpose. In February 2011, Alice Warrander was knocked off her bicycle in London. She suffered life-threatening injuries, including a severe blood clot on her brain. However, the London Neurological Department at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington operated successfully. Alice was released a week later to convalesce at her parents' home in Ayrshire, Scotland. Before her accident, Alice ran a digital business, lived an independent life in London and regularly ran along the Thames. Unfortunately, her vitality as well as her lifestyle and business disappeared with the accident. Her doctors told her it could take two years to recover fully. However, after four months of convalescing, Alice felt partially recovered. She was walking short distances and painting. Around this time, she conceived the idea of walking the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome, a journey she would later call her accidental jubilee. A jubilee is a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain an indulgence in the Roman Catholic Church. Alice set out on her journey in July 2011, intent on saying thank you for her life, proving that she could do it, and working out how to spend the rest of her life. Pilgrimage, by definition, is challenging. However, Alice's story, told in her book An Accidental Jubilee, proves not only how tough it can be, the story of her journey to Topaz St. Bernard's Pass is a cliffhanger, but also how kind and compassionate others can be, even those she did not know and will never meet again. That damaging moment. Crucially, Alice achieved her goal of working out how to spend the rest of her life, which can be a difficult challenge for many of us. A third of the way through her pilgrimage, during which she walked in pain and rain sustained by the kindness of others, she arrived in France. She writes that, This is a significant moment in Alice's book, and not the only one, by any means. I find myself asking how she can go into a church and come out an hour later knowing exactly how she will spend the rest of her life, when many of us spend our entire life wondering how to live with meaning and purpose. I wonder what led her to this moment, and what we can learn from her. I suspect that Alice's near-death experience and the powerful realisation that life is precious had much to do with it. But of course, this is not readily available for most of us, and certainly not one we want to take voluntarily. However, accepting a challenge such as Alice's three-month walk along the Via Francigena is the next best thing, and is open to us all. Indeed, this takes us back to ancient mythologies and the transformational nature of a hero's challenge. It does not have to be a thousand-mile walk, of course. My regular annual laws pilgrimage, though nothing to compare with Alice's walk, serves the same purpose for my fellow travellers and me. Alice's contact with sane people, both kind and indifferent on her journey, and her close contact with the natural world – she tended to avoid maps and rays, and is scathing about using GPS – will also have done much to change her outlook on life. Then, of course, there is that moment of quiet and peace in a church, a moment of relief from the struggle of the thread where these damascene moments happen. But of course, it does not have to be amassed in a church, although I find these occasions can be deeply inspiring. Just taking time to walk, read, and take a reflective step back can be just as inspirational. It happened to me once in a ski lift. The mountain's silence and beauty inspired me to change course. I handed in my notice and sold my flat on my return home, and went off in a new direction. A new future. So, did it work? It seems so. Alice put herself through art school, and now sells her paintings through Hobby Horse Art, a slightly unconventional and dynamic art dealership. Alice has also written a trilogy of primals and, of course, her book about her pilgrimage. It also takes a challenge, either of surprise or plan, to take us into changing the direction of our life, as Alice's story exemplifies.