TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Friday, January 6, 2006

1:37 AM
Posted by jodi rose

you know what?
I AM making this up as I go along.

...and despite all the concerned friends teling me to start thinking about a financial plan, property, superannuation and what-am-I-doing-with-my-life? unspoken fears that I can hear in my mothers voice, it's ok. No, I don't know where I will be in a year.

And maybe I won't get everything I plan to done.
There are worse things.
I seem to be doing just fine this far.
Not that I've given up but hey, sometimes life has other priorities. They seem to be shifting just now. The value of being a kind, loving person with a sense of connection and responsibility to the world you're living in can be a little lost amongst all this striving for achievement and sucess. One of my good friends here was apologetic when I showed her photos of my friends in other places - 'I'm sorry, I'm just a housewife' she said - having baked the walnut-filled puff pastries she knew I liked - please. don't say that. you're wonderful. No-one is 'just' anything.
We are all exactly what we are, no more and certainly no less.

I have that Nelson Mandela quote on a card from my long-suffering mother (who tells me that actually he is quoting a female playwright) about being less than we are: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around us.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others."

for whatever 'God' means to you, it is your responsibility to make the most of your own life - no-one else will do it for you. and however much people might hate to see you wasting your talent and potential, fritter away your time and energy - no-one else has the power to focus you on the right path, it's something you have to find yourself. which took me a while to figure out, that my being unhappy and unsatisfied with life was only hurting me, everyone else is just getting on with it.

And there is consistency in this at least. Charting moments as they flash by and hoping to see their interconnectedness sometime later. The feeling you get sometimes: everything in my life has led to this.

Sorry to come over all vague and philosophical like this, it's just that I have that kaleidoscope feeling again - you know when you can feel the patterns shifting and your world rearranging around you but don't quite know how the shapes will turn out - maybe it will keep drifting into the next thing, or maybe this is a significant change. Whatever it is, feels good - in a soft, calm, grounded way. Which, believe me, is a welcome change from the intense, chaotic turbulence I'm used to.

Saw 'The Island' tonight - surprisingly good sci-fi movie, futurist dystopia with ewan macgregor and scarlett johanson - both fine actors and eye candy - who undergo the classic realisation of the robot/clone/ 'not human' and in their discovery develop human emotions and desires while managing to save the world using only their wits against the might and weapons of the corporation and mercenaries.

Not that I want to give away the ending, but it reminded me very much of Plato's cave - again. Walked out of the cinema a little shaken, had to regroup at the pub with some humanity around me.

A little more human, a little less driven. That's the balance I'm striving for this year.