Stuck at Home

It has been raining for three days in Sydney and I felt the monotonous beat of the rain on the roof coincide with the way I am feeling about my life. 14,000 miles away from home and I am in the same place I started. I have a respectable  job that pays well but bores me to no end. I have a morning routine complete with hitting the snooze button too many times and running out the door for work only able to finish half my cup of coffee, if I even had time to make the coffee that morning. I do live in a lovely flat with great housemates, but I don’t find myself meeting new people all that often. I find myself buying items I don’t need just because I can. I recreated the life I left behind.

I thought traveling to a far off place would make everything different. But its not the place that needed to change, its me. I recreated familiarity and with that I conjured exactly the thing I was leaving. The security of having a comfortable life is hard to resist. In fact its what many of us strive for, but the trade off is much greater than we anticipate.  Things that are important to me are neglected for the monotony of  routine. After 8 hours of mind numbing office work, I cannot be creative. Its been dormant too long. I cannot be spontaneous and have an adventure, instead I just walk to the supermarket, undecided about what to have for dinner. I tried going for a drive, but found myself driving in circles in the places that are well known to me in this city.

Why is it so easy to neglect the things we love to do? I was having a coffee at the same coffee shop I frequent, watching the rain pass, when I started a conversation with an elderly man. To pass the time he showed me his artwork. He sketches little snippets of life. Seeming simple and everyday scenes, like two people walking in a car park or a rusty chair. He puts a great deal of effort into his work, but he confessed he has only started sketching again recently. In his younger days he sketched and painted and created art all the time, but oneday he just stopped. No reason, just did and he wished he never had, a regret he is trying to correct but laments all the time he has lost. We shared that experience, I used to write so much when I was in high school. But I stopped many years ago, and only started this blog recently. I don’t want any more years of regret, but security doesn’t fuel my creativity. Its been too long since I had a fire going in my soul.

The one thing that keeps me going is that in 5 weeks I am leaving for the desert. Yes I said changing places doesn’t change your attitude, but if there is no security option to fall back on, then something different has to happen.  I will be attempting to drive around the circumference of Australia and through her red center. I will be living out of my station wagon, picking up travel partners and then watching them go again. I will wake up to the spectacular sunrises and see the sun set in a place so barren that the evolution of the animals here are like no other place on earth. I will be far from home in more ways than one. 

Attachment

Traveling and constantly moving has a major downside; attachment and loss. I have met some incredible people, but I know the time will be here soon for me to say goodbye. It hurts every time , even though I always knew it would be this way. I have met some people that don't want to get to know me because they know I will leave. I understand that. It’s a defence mechanism. I do the same, when I realize that I’m attached, I have to pull away, because I know the pain of goodbye will be too much.

  Buddhists believe attachment is the root of suffering.  Is it possible to reconcile un-attachment with meaningful relationships? Can I truly open myself up to people that will not be in my life for a great length of time? We all know that nothing is permanent, so why do we struggle with the idea?  

 As children, we are taught the idea of ownership and attachment at a very early age. Just try to take a child’s toy away, even if s/he is not playing with it. The sense of loss is immediate; something of mine has been taken away. When we lose someone or something valuable, we grieve and remember the times we had with it or them. This sense of ownership and attachment,  causes us to question ourselves. How are we to go on without the object of our longing? Who are we without our attachments? We are part of that mental image; we are part of our desires and ultimately part of what we desire. Every time I say goodbye to a friend I will never see again, a little bit of me goes with them. The mental images of the moments we had together are part of their conscious memory too; thereby we become part of them. Even a short time spent together was not a waste, but a memory of a connection.