Surprises!

I am starting this blog post with a zillion thoughts whizzing through my head...the last few weeks have been tough going and not much funny stuff has happened...all rather serious if I am honest.  But then again, the serious stuff gets you thinking....sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing.  Either way - thinking happens!

I am naturally a reflective being...I take time to digest things...I have to look for the trends....it takes time for me to process things that are happening to me, to make sense of them and then to turn them into rational thoughts...I am also helluva sensitive - I know I am.  I try so hard to be considerate, to think of others each and every day.  But at the moment I feel like throwing in that towel and saying - bugger it.

This London journey of mine has been enlightening.  I needed to do it.  I was stuck in a rut in Joburg.  I needed the mental snotklaap to make sure I did not wander through this life aimlessly stumbling upon things rather than making conscious choices.  But in doing this London journey, I have been blessed with the chance to reflect on the 'honeymoon' I thought I was coming to and the 'reality' of that honeymoon when it becomes my daily life.  And the universe has taught me a lesson or two.  Some funny...some not so much.

I have discovered that friendship is a tenuous thing.  That what you feel is there, is actually not.  I know that I have a need to be needed.  I am not needy as a person, but I do need to feel that I have a purpose.  That I have a place in the world.  And in London, sometimes those that need you are inconsistent in their neediness.  They wander in and out of your life when it works for them...and when you need them their lives over runneth with other important activities.

I have learnt that you can feel distant from friends even when you live in the same city...and close when you live 15000 kilometres apart.  And that when you are not physically present it is so hard to see photos of how people's lives have knitted closed the hole that was you.  That really has been the most difficult thing for me.  Facebook is like yin and yang...it keeps you close but magnifies the distance.  Bitch!

I have also learnt that I am trusting.  Too trusting sometimes.  I give my friendship as a gift to so many who cross my path.  I need to learn to be more selective.  Because for me, friendship is a two-way relationship...not a one way passing fad.

I was in a team meeting for the whole of last week.  35 of us from across the globe.  5 days solid locked in one room.  It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.  I have a passion for my job and my place in the world and I know that my colleagues see that.  I was touched at the end of the 5 days when I received a number of cards of appreciation from the 5 days...personal notes from colleagues that celebrated the things they appreciated about me.  In their words.  But the most touching aspect came from a colleague, Richard, who approached me at the end of the 5 days and said.  'I did not write you a card.  Not because I have nothing to say, but rather because I wanted to say it in person.  I think you are an inspiration.  You say such wise things and I am inspired by you'.  I was overcome and at the back end of 5 exhausting days I became a little teary.  I get like that!  I graciously thanked him and then found myself needing to escape the room to breathe.

As I type this, I feel like am in my own personal washing machine.  Being turbulently tossed around by a million things at the moment.  I always said this London journey was not my forever plan.  It was an adventure.  But I am scared that my adventure may mean that I can never go back to the way that was back in Africa.  Friends have hooked up, got married, had babies, bought homes, got divorced, left the country, changed jobs.  And as much as I consciously know this has all happened, in my head it is still the idealised place I left.  I can see how it is possible to become transient world travellers in this life - it is sometimes to scary to contemplate going back to a place that is no longer the same as the way you remember.  And through it all I also know I am not the same person who left there too.  I have grown and developed and changed my mind on things.  All in all it makes for an interesting scenario.

In the meantime I live this one life I have with as much zest and enthusiasm as I can muster.  And I wait....sometimes with excitement and sometimes with intrepidation...for the surprises that will come with each day.  And that is what I keep reminding myself - life is one big surprise most of the time.