Lessons in life from a Unicorn

My inspiration for this post came when I attended a festival earlier this year. Not being one for large crowds and deafening beats, this festival described itself as “an adventure camp for grown-ups”. Six months on from buying our tickets from the civilised quiet of our home office, and after battling Friday afternoon traffic on what was set to be one of the hottest weekends of the year, my boyfriend and I found ourselves immersed in three days of hippy, hedonistic madness. I was completely and irreversibly sucked in by the blissful hours whiled away tie dying all my clothes, playing hide and seek in the woods, foraging, creating my own natural oils, baking bread on fire, swing dancing, hoola hooping, capturing the flag, making jewellery, tieing knots, and finally dozing off to adventure stories around the camp fire.
My boyfriend and I live in Cambridge, and while not afraid to immerse ourselves in its exciting, diverse and often very liberal culture, we have been described on a few occasions by friends and family as “secret hippies”. I assume this refers to the fact that, by day, we both hold down quite straight laced jobs (he’s an engineer, I work for the NHS), and perhaps as a result of this we spend our down time tending to the fruit and veg on our balcony, seeking out quiet places to go for picnics, listening to music we think is cool but no one’s ever heard of, going on walks with llamas, book binding, and trying (and failing) to make our own soft furnishings. I’m stopping there as reading this list back I’m already thinking “bloody hipsters!”. And it’s true that my generation (commonly referred to as millennials) although not the rule, do seem to be the one’s spending Monday to Friday being productive and responsible members of society, and using the evenings and weekends to seek something deeper out of life.
My boyfriend and I questioned on a few occasions “what do you think these people do in their ‘real’ lives?”
Our adventure camp for grown-ups seemed to attract predominantly young professionals from the city, possibly for this very reason. Gazing from the comfort of my tent at the chap sporting hemp shorts, a silk robe, and a top hat, clutching a pipe in one hand and a teapot in the other, the group of friends clutching masks they had made earlier in the day denoting the “patrol” they had been assigned to, the two guys in the tent next to us having a quick game of Frisbee before their next activity, and the conga of people, all shapes and sizes, in their birthday suits emerging from a tepee, it struck me that people need more than ever to escape the sometimes gruelling day to day of grown up life.
My boyfriend and I questioned on a few occasions “what do you think these people do in their ‘real’ lives?”“Maybe they live in the forest” one of us would joke “and hibernate until summertime, when they emerge from the heather and tour the most ‘alternative’ festivals they can find, before crawling, sleepy and broken from narcotics, back to their dens, to sit out the seasons where they can’t wear their floaty skirts and flower garlands”. But of course, in reality, these “secret hippies” spend 47 weeks of the year working jobs they may at best find satisfying (if really lucky — fulfilling) and at worse chronically stressful.
But whether or not they’re working high powered, high salary jobs in the city, or are public sector workers on frozen pay, why shouldn’t they spend every spare second relinquishing the fun and play that has escaped their everyday?
While reclined on a frayed piece of tarpaulin in the woods carefully weaving leaves and twigs into my natural headpiece, one of my fellow campers asked the activity leader what she did for the rest of the year (i.e. what her job was). The lady running the activity answered, not a hint of irony in her tone “I’m a unicorn leader”. Now, in my cynical, grown up, tax paying, putting the bins out promptly on a Monday night, never been late for a credit card repayment mind, my second thought was “so she’s unemployed”. This is because my first thought was “unicorns aren’t real”.
But nobody else in our little forest school for grown-ups appeared to share my thoughts. Their voices full of awe and respect, they immediately began asking questions like “wow that’s so cool, so what does it involve?” “so do you dress up like a unicorn every day?” “what’s the word for a group of unicorns?” (a ‘fabulous’ for anyone curious!)
When recounting this story since, my listeners have always shared my initial reaction. But I have gradually adjusted the way I tell it. I have begun to feel more and more that the unicorn leader is perhaps the one having the last laugh, the one leading her life to the fullest. After all, as I sit describing the encounter to colleagues in my office, taking a break from my computer screen to have a brief and much needed caffeine kick, gathered around a rickety kettle barely fit for use, the chick in my story is dressed up as a unicorn making people happy (her answer to the question “what does a unicorn leader do?”)
I have found myself becoming increasingly disillusioned with the daily grind of grown up life, and I’m starting to think that actually, maybe the unicorn has the right idea. Why shouldn’t we all just have more fun? It struck me that if someone had said to me as a child “I’m a unicorn” I would have said “cool, I’m a dragon” and an epic game would have ensued.
Why shouldn’t we all just have more fun? It struck me that if someone had said to me as a child “I’m a unicorn” I would have said “cool, I’m a dragon” and an epic game would have ensued.
As adults we fail to suspend our disbelief, yet how often do we say of children “I wish I could have that much fun with just a box” or “I wish I got that excited about bubbles”. Why don’t we? What’s stopping us? Obviously, responsibility has a bit to do with it. But we don’t need to be responsible all the time. Often, we just need to dust off the part of our brain in charge of imagination, and remember how to play.
So next time you have a new printer, toaster or piece of furniture delivered, be sure to get a quick rendition of “row row row the boat” in in your new box turned boat, or rocket, or plane, or anything your imagination decides it to be. Sounds silly, but it’s one more laugh in your day than if you’d simply opened the box, connected the printer, and begun an afternoon’s battle trying to introduce it to your computer!
