Perspective
I've had to tell lots of people that we're going to Australia, to live, for good, in September, and for the most part the reaction has been, 'Whoaaa! How do you feel about that?' and it's a hard question to answer because it depends what kind of night's sleep I had, what the kids are doing, what side of bed I got out of, and how much hassle I'm having with the dratted forms. So one of the answers is, 'I don't know how I feel about it', and truthfully I don't know how I feel...
Twenty years ago I think I would have embraced the idea without a second thought: ooh, how exciting! Yes, I'd love to move the other side of the world because what have I got to lose? What do I have here? But aged forty, with two children (even if one of them is large enough not to count as a child any more - I'm not commenting on his biological age!), a garden, three allotments, one third of an MA, and several arts-admin activities going on, I am not so sure. Hence the ambivalence.
I bought an Orange Pippin apple tree on M9 dwarfing root stock; old fashioned red gooseberries and the red and white currants that my mother loved and I love too. I'm tucking into a bowl of home-grown strawberries (Honeoye, Florence and Hapil), and the artichokes that I've nurtured from seed for the last two years are setting their first chokes and I need to look up what to do with them now. I've literally and figuratively been putting down roots, and now I need to pull them up again, and just like a plant it may take me a few seasons to recover.
I haven't achieved that Buddhist acceptance of the transience of material things. Many of my material possessions have indeed been with me only transiently - witness what happened to all of my things when I was with Andy! I don't fear that any more, but big changes still feel as if they are being ripped out of me rather than being a willing renunciation of things present and a hopeful adoption of a changed future.
Maybe it's just a question of perspective: close up the mountain that we have to climb seems huge. Perhaps if I achieved a bit more detachment and could feel further away from it, it would then seem smaller? I'm trying.
Twenty years ago I think I would have embraced the idea without a second thought: ooh, how exciting! Yes, I'd love to move the other side of the world because what have I got to lose? What do I have here? But aged forty, with two children (even if one of them is large enough not to count as a child any more - I'm not commenting on his biological age!), a garden, three allotments, one third of an MA, and several arts-admin activities going on, I am not so sure. Hence the ambivalence.
I bought an Orange Pippin apple tree on M9 dwarfing root stock; old fashioned red gooseberries and the red and white currants that my mother loved and I love too. I'm tucking into a bowl of home-grown strawberries (Honeoye, Florence and Hapil), and the artichokes that I've nurtured from seed for the last two years are setting their first chokes and I need to look up what to do with them now. I've literally and figuratively been putting down roots, and now I need to pull them up again, and just like a plant it may take me a few seasons to recover.
I haven't achieved that Buddhist acceptance of the transience of material things. Many of my material possessions have indeed been with me only transiently - witness what happened to all of my things when I was with Andy! I don't fear that any more, but big changes still feel as if they are being ripped out of me rather than being a willing renunciation of things present and a hopeful adoption of a changed future.
Maybe it's just a question of perspective: close up the mountain that we have to climb seems huge. Perhaps if I achieved a bit more detachment and could feel further away from it, it would then seem smaller? I'm trying.
posted by Sara Bowen at 10:16 pm
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