28 December 2005
lately.
The past few days I think I’ve been missing Brisbane. It’s that bad transition moment when the home novelty has worn off and the reality kicks in. I’ve done nothing, but I know I want to do things. But I don’t know what. This is when I say, “I wish I was a more inspiring person”.
The summit
You cannot stay on the summit forever
You have to come down again…
So why bother in the first place:
Simply just this:
What is above knows what is below
But what is below does not know what is above
One climbs,
One sees,
One descends,
One sees no longer,
But one has seen
There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions…
By the memory of what one saw higher up
What one can no longer see
One can at least know.
I remember on the way home in the car from Brisbane I was thinking about why we silly humans do these things that we know will cause sadness when they end. Why do we go through these experiences that we know will end, and that we know will cause us sadness to end and a time of difficult transition. I knew all this before I left but depsite that knowledge of how I feel after the events I still went. And it came down to the fact that for me life is worth taking these risks for, the risk to go out and put yourself on the line, the experience something else, because I know that despite the down-ness I feel now I am a richer person for the last few weeks of “course” and relationship building. And it’s worth it to take these risks for such valuable experiences, and there is no way I wouldn’t do it, even in the midst of the walk back down the other side of the hill, amidst a difficult call to change, because the challenge in many ways is the point I suppose.
And I feel mildly lost at the moment, without focus and without direction, but I’m probably not in much of a different position from before, maybe I just have higher expectations of myself now. To independently be interested and to do things (things of which I’m still figuring out for myself). I am just utterly petrified I may look back in a month and nothing will have changed and I’ll do nothing. I can’t imagine too many things worse at this moment in my life.
Loveliness
December 28th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
I’ve done the same rollercoaster thing myself of late ;-). I think it’s hard but worth it in the end. Maybe your suffering reverse culture shock.
I also remember more then once worrying that change wouldn’t last. Unfortuantely I think we as individuals are not well versed at recognising gradual changes in ourselves. We look for dramatic instant changes out of things like courses, when instead most of the long term ones just happen without you noticing.
Often it’s as simple as a gradual change in the way you think about one issue even.
December 30th, 2005 at 12:46 am
To finish that conversation David. I think that I agree with you, and I think that I know exactly what you mean. But I feel like I am in a mildly different space. It’s a different change. I think it’s a change of independence where “change” must actually become important in a different sense. I can’t really explain, but I would be happy to have another conversation with you about it.