No matter how far your mind wanders, teeth decay if you don't brush them

Nick Hornby quotes Oscar Wilde in “A Long Way Down”, saying one’s real life is often the life one does not lead, and the one you do lead does not let you be who you thought you were.

I commiserate. When I was eight, I was convinced that I would have my own condo and car by 24. It was only recently that I acknowledged I would probably never sing live at a concert in front of a thousand fans, and more recently than should have been that I would never be an accomplished ice-skater.

One body, 24 hours in a day, and only 100% to give.

I used to think of these as limitations but really, they are the default tools everyone gets to shape their life with, then fill it.

Ironically, knowing your boundaries is the only way to stretch them, the same way having a cup with finite capacity is the only way it can runneth over. And if you do it right, you might just be that kind of person for whom ex-ex colleagues still band together for a hearty send-off when you leave the country.

Child, sibling, friend, traveler, worker. That is all I am. And that is plenty.

The Occasional Detour

I believe we all have our own paths to follow, and lessons to learn. For this reason, there is no point in envying or coveting, and in the same way showing up the next person.

I’m good with this concept, and most days live peacefully by it. But sometimes, there is just a need to step on over to that offensive someone's path and give him a tight slap in the face, before carrying on.

The Urgency of Transformation

"When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form or a species - will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap."

by Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth.


What a great paragraph. I have always been one for the leaping.

Hey it's a little late to make resolutions but...

This year - I will

1. Do something about things that make me unhappy.
2. Not sweat the small stuff.

The thing about moving forward is to never to look back, and I have figured out that it is because if you did, you'd be terrified to see the things you're leaving behind.

Feel your cells.

I am apprehensive, excited, in my zone, out of my league, all at the same time.

What If

Two totally unrelated topics, but what if:

1. For one day, all of us knew how we really felt about each other. The complete realisation of what you are as perceived by the other person. Parents and children, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, bosses and subordinates, friends and enemies and everything in between. Do you reckon we'd be better people for it?

2. The peace we have now in this country is at a stage where it is coincidental, that every day where nothing happens to you is because someone has not decided to commit a crime where you are? That really, the safety support system is no longer much more than the impression that there is one?

Getting off the EY interstate

SM – who got off the table and wrote over every permanent-inked word on that whiteboard
DS – who said “learn, learn, learn” and “manage, manage, manage”
CO – who taught me to laugh at myself
DJS – who has an impact like no other, relating the theory of the four faces
GL – who closed the door and let me cry when I was not much but a girl hurt
RR – whose first response to bad news is often laughter
My teams and co-workers – with whom I cracked coconuts, jumped puddles, watched strung poultry, walked minefields, sang songs of high hopes and love after death, shopped, sunned, fished, wined and boozed, reheated and ate out with. Travelled and grew with.

There will never be another time like this.

Click and Snap

Sitting on your sister’s bed in a new red knit dress, eating refried fish with soy sauce on a rainy Sunday evening.

Click.

The streetlamp light through the tree outside the house where you’re having your first barbeque party.

Lying on your stomach on the roof a car, talking hopes and dreams with a buddy like only two 18 year olds can.

The amazing number of stars you can see from an oil palm plantation at night.

Being spun around in a shopping cart on New Year’s Eve by your best mates.

I have a thing about taking mental snapshots for moments significant in a way that you know but sometimes can’t describe. Absorb the scene, let it sink through your eyes, hold it in your breath for a moment…and snap.

I like to believe that at the end of things, the road, whatever, apart from that bit where you finally find out how it all works out, there will also be a re-run of these pictures. Should be a good show.

Btw, can you believe it's March already?