Darwin, with regret....

Having left you beyond a far horizon I now realise that I judged you way too harshly and all too quickly.  I committed the greatest sin by comparing your new image to the one of which I first experienced.  From this inconsiderate stance, I chided you for changing over time passed.  I too had changed and this I knew, but still you accepted me with the decency you have constantly shown.  I understand now that you are the same gentle spirit I knew all those years ago.  You bear the same colours, the same warmth and the same pace.  You still paint the sunsets with brilliant colours and the stormy heavens with streaks of tropical gold lightning.  You still dance with the palm trees in the sultry breezes along the seashores.  Yet all I saw were the new changes, not what was still there.  I owe you an apology and one day I will return once more to reconcile.  For a creature who had hoped to live without the burden of regrets, I may just have collected my first one.   

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done." - Lucillle Ball

The gilded path.

You know that moment at work when everything is going great and life can't get any better then unexpectedly it all seems to fall apart? You turn a corner on this high speed jaunt and suddenly there is a dead end and you are hit with a feeling of helplessness and loss of control, maybe even doom. Its at this point I have arrived. But with the lightening reflexes of a race car driver, I have come up with three options. One is to crash and disintegrate under the pressure of impact, something I have unwittingly done before. The next is to stop and reverse to whence I came negating any progress made.  Although why waste energy backtracking through life. Finally, to pull up gently and walk a different route to where I want to be.  So with options at hand, I have decided it is time to stretch my legs.  Time to breathe in deeply, absorb the spectacle of life surrounding me and head through the green fields.  Away from the paved road I had been on, and in these new lush surrounds, I will find my way once more. 

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Thomas Edison

Hello New Zealand, we're back.

Leaving New Zealand to return to Australia in March of last year never felt quite right. Maybe we were forcing ourselves to go because we had declared from the onset that our time in New Zealand was finite and Australia is where we both wanted to live. Selling up and returning to our homeland was part of the original plan that we had set ourselves and consequently must be observed. So leave we did.

Now we have returned to New Zealand to live for a second time and it feels as if our year in Australia was merely a dream. Not even that, it was something I saw on television or maybe read about. Thinking about our time in Darwin stirs no emotional connection. It was a time and place so far removed from how I feel now that I can barely recognise the experience as one of my own. I love Australia, I really do. It will always be my home and I will miss its diverse and remarkable beauty, the family and friends that it nurtures and the opportunity that a future return is always possible. For now though, for today as I stand windswept on a wild beach and gaze towards precipitous mountain ranges that stretch far beyond any horizons, it feels great to be back. I await enthusiastically what the next stage of life has in store for me. I can’t help but smile.