If you had been at JFK Airport, late October 1995, boarding a plane to London, you may remember a couple of young woman crying because they didn’t want to get on the flight home.
Visas were up, flight was boarding, no pennies, but they seriously discussed their (limited) options.
However, they knew deep down they were going to have to step on board and make do with free gin available on the 5 hour flight home.
Gosh, I got so drunk that flight! What a state, we’d be put off in Iceland by a Flight Marshall today. Not for being rowdy, for the never ending weeping!
I’d spent six months in the US, working and travelling, and I met two people who would then become a key part of my life, even today.
I didn’t want to come home because I didn’t want to pick up a relationship that was poisonous, live in a home that held no love (with the poison), return to university to complete a degree that I even knew I didn’t want to do the day I began (referring my place for three years, was a big enough hint I didn’t take!).
In fact, I didn’t have clue what I wanted to really do.
Because I had went to the States alone (no one knew me) to teach drama (my love), all of that (percieved) yuckie life stuff was left in the UK.
You know the phrase I use a lot, become who you are, those 6 months I believe were the first time I understood and lived what it meant. I didn’t have the same understanding at the time, but now, yes.
Some would say it was just the holiday blues that I didn’t want to come home. No, holiday blues aren’t real and don’t exist.
What was real was the fact I was unhappy with the life I had thought up and created back in the UK.
What did exist was I had experienced and caught a glimpse of a picture of who I really was, and the picture of life back home sure as hell didn’t match it.
It’s holiday season in the Western Hemisphere, schools are out, people boarding flights, ferries, trains and automobiles. Some will use the time to rest, restore and revive.
And others will see at as an opportunity to ‘get it away from it all’, to ‘have a break for a bit’ so they can ‘leave their worries behind’.
Like I did, you may not want to return, or when you do you’ll probably want to hold onto the picture of the you that can do and experience peace, relaxation, carefree, fun, enjoying every moment, eating well, sleeping soundly, a happier you.
What if … and this is for all of us … holidays or not,
- What if that’s the way life was meant to be all the time?
- What if ‘real’ life wasn’t something you had to ‘get away from’?
- What if, you didn’t want to ‘have a break from real life’, because it was to good to be separated from?
- What if, worries didn’t exist, never mind being left behind?
- What if, there is no distance or a journey to take to become who you really are, you were already here?
Now, depending on your thinking, you may have completed resisted my questions.
That’s fine. I understand. I remember when I came back from the US I thought I left that person (I liked, and loved) over there.
When I returned, I automatically bought into people telling me that, ‘It’s back to normal’ and, ‘You can’t live the freedom life forever’.
Today I would ask.
Normal? According to who’s definition of normal? Can’t be free? Why not? Who decided that one? Is that not how we arrived? I signed nothing to say otherwise.
One of the reasons I do what I do (including these blog posts) is because I believe in us, that who we really are (confident, free, fearless, courageous, and all other moxie stuff) isn’t at some other destination, it’s not a 4 hour flight away, or a suitcase packed with your finest, nor is it in India, Peru or Brazil.
It’s also not in our worries, fears, doubts, what everyone else says the rules are.
My intentions are genuine, I want to provoke you in a nice way, inspire you, and yes … motivate you to question and then act.
So,
Without getting a flight, The Moxie Project starts the 2nd of July. And yes, I do hope you make the non-distance journey.
Why? Because there is a massive difference from ‘being you’ for a few weeks a year, to being you … all year.
You aren’t here to live, work, create in fear. You are here to be a full on unapologetic of your gorgeous amazing self. All time. Not just some of the time.
I hope you can join us.
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