how quickly pivots the world...

i have just been given the opportunity to return to brisbane next year for school. its incredibly tempting...

someone that i wanted to become much closer to in brisbane sent me this in reply to my suggestion the he run off with me: I am overwhelmingly convinced that you, as a beautiful woman, have overt and secret admirers a’plenty. Explore them.

well, i know a polite brush-off when i hear it, and that's fine. i am a big girl - i can take it. but it doesn't change the fact that something profound and life changing has occurred over the course of the last few months, and i have four men to thank for it:

jon pointed out (and i posted it previously here) that the march of time is relentless. if you don't seize your dreams when you have the chance, they will slip irrecoverably through your fingers.

two men in their forties have shown me that in no uncertain terms by the way they live their own lives. i have watched them let so many chances at happiness slip through their fingers. i have listened to them whinge and moan about how they always end up "the losers", never once for a moment clueing in to the fact that their misery is a result of their choosing to be one of "life's passengers", as chris calls them.

and then there is chris: he is in his sixties, and has finally realized that when you have a chance at love - or any kind of happiness - you grab it, hold onto it, nurture it, never put it off because it isn't the flawless pearl you'd once dreamed of. he has realized that as you get older, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for joy - and that if God miraculously gives you a chance, TAKE IT. don't wait to see if there might be something more perfect around the next corner.

chris is how i want to live my life. there will be obstacles; they can be overcome. there will be mistakes made; they can be rectified. it will not be perfect; i never asked for perfect.

so i am going to brisbane, for no other reason than i want to: there is no special man there waiting for me, no great human love affair to be consumated. i am going simply as a student, to study and work, to hang out with friends i have been too long separated from, to see the country, to meet people in the church and to make contacts there so that when i do immigrate permanently, job applications will not be met with a puzzled "who is this person?"

for many years, caring for my mum has forced me to be "one of life's passengers", but the older i get the more soul-destroying that becomes. so, i will find a way to both care for a wonderful mother, and still live my own life on my own terms while i am still young enough to enjoy it.

right. manifesto done. convoy, HO!

now, what to do about that "complication" in new zealand, i ask you all? :)