Do you set yourself goals?

I do, and sometimes the goal itself isn’t the reward (although according to the book I’m reading Your Life in Half a Second, it should be). But no, sometimes the goal is a bit shit, like paying off some debt or doing a First Aid course, so I have to structure in a reward once I get there.

And sometimes the goal is awesome, but it’s painful to get there, so I have to give myself other bits of pain, to help me along. I know, I know, it’s weird, and I should be motivating myself to move towards pleasure, instead of away from pain, but I wonder sometimes if I’m just not wired that way.

When I was a baby, I apparently HATED having a wet nappy, and so I reportedly toilet-trained myself at 9 months. (Yes Mums, my Mother swears this is true… Hmmm…)   The same went for not being able to get into ALL OF THE THINGS, so I learned to walk. So even then, I was motivated by either getting stuff, or moving away from undesirable situations.

This year I wanted to go to the USA for Christmas. I have a brother and sis-in-law there, another brother and sis-in-law who will be going there, and Mum who jet-sets around the place like nobodies business. So everyone else saved their pennies and booked their flights and prepared for fun times with egg nogg and Ugly Christmas Sweaters and singing by the open fire. Except me. I mean I saved a bit, I guess, but not enough. “I can’t help it,” I wailed, “it’s expensive to be me you know.” (And etcetera.)

As the time to loc- in a flight drew ever and ever closer, I had to invent more and more leverage to get me to save the money. I imagined missing out on all the laughs, I pretended that perhaps one of my mob was dying, or would die in the next year, and this would be my last chance to see them, I thought about my kids not waking up with the Nanny they usually have Christmas with. None of it was working.

And then, in the backbackback of my crockery cupboard I found this:

Not sure if it’s for drinking out of, or bathing in

And I vowed, that until I saved the money to go to America, I would not be allowed to drink my morning coffee out of anything else, nor would I be able to drink any other coffee than this:

I suspect this may be poison

There was to be no Nespresso at home, no capps at the local cafe, no sneaky little jaunts with friends after drop-off for ping-jections of that sweet brown nectar of the gods. Nope.

Times were getting desperate, friends, desperate indeed.

And then, somehow, with the help of Flight Centre, all night google searching of airline prices, a change tin filled with two-dollar coins, and the invention of early Christmas presents, this happened:

YES, THIS!

And then this happened:

Cheers to holidays

And now THIS CAN HAPPEN:

Sweeet

I’m not sure what I’m more excited about. (I love you, Nespresso Machine.)

So, what are you doing for Christmas?

And how the heck do you motivate yourself, other than drinking daily poison?

…From The Ashers

Country Life: You don’t get this stuff growing wild at my place.

I have had a weekend of fun and funny catch-ups with friends, and has given me pause to think about how different we all are.

I think that I have the best job in the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, doing all of the different things, and wonder at why they aren’t all chiropractors like me.

I think that I live in the best part of the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, living in all of the different places, and I wonder at why they don’t all live at my place.

And the list goes on.

Because every day that I consciously choose this life and the things in it, I am expressing my preferences and crafting out a little more of the story of my life. And because I love all of the things that I get to do, and feel so lucky that I have somehow been able to make all of these choices, I find it weird that not one single other person on this planet is choosing that same things as me. Why aren’t you all trying to muscle in on my space?

Could it be that you like your choices?

Seeing my country friends on Saturday, and the things they love, and then seeing my overseas friends on Sunday, and listening to the things they love about their home, made me smile and smile at how much I love the decisions I have made. All of the little choices that I have made over the passing years, that make me, me. I also loved that we are all able to sit around a table together, share a meal and some laughs, find our common ground and relish the things that make us similar, but then also search out the differences, and rejoice in the things that make us so unique.

Vive la difference!

…From The Ashers

Gough wouldn’t sit for his traditional portrait following the dismissal. This is the Archibald portrait by Pugh that he insisted be used

I was one year old, when, to the catchy tune of, “It’s time” Gough Whitlam came to rule over Australia. And rule he did. In a flurry of chaotic activity he did so many things to change the landscape and the philosophy of the suburbs I would grow up in.

By the time I was three years old, University education was free, divorce was ‘no fault’ and women were finally being heard.

Heady things for a girl-child growing up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne.

Macabre as I am, I like to reflect on my life from time to time, and consider what my eulogy will be like. Who will speak for me? What will they say? What will be my legacy?

Yesterday, on hearing the news of Gough’s passing, I sat still for a time, wondering at the legacy of that silver-haired silver-tail. In his short time in power he achieved so many things that have enriched my life, in ways I never even really stop to consider. As I sat in my minutes of silence yesterday, I shed a tear for a man I never met, who quite frankly, has allowed me to have the life I am so lucky and grateful to have.

Most importantly, I grew up with family harmony and cohesion due to his divorce reforms and the provision of legal aid. Then, by extension I was able to see my Mum find her soul mate and true love, instead of being bound by archaic laws that would have trapped her in a stale, repressive relationship with my biological father. Such important imprinting for a pre-school girl.

I also grew up not wondering if I would go to university, but what would I do when I got there. I am at the first of my family to go to uni, grabbing those florid, precious pieces of paper that allow me to work and play in a career that makes my heart sing, and (hopefully) enhances the lives, and expands the potential of the beautiful people in my community. I would never be a chiropractor without Gough’s impact.

The year I started Uni HECs was being introduced and we campaigned and rallied against it, sitting in, and shouting out. For many of my uni mates from private schools and prosperous families, the demonstrations were a bit of a lark I suppose, a chance to shout a little and have a grown up tantrum, but I was shouting from my core.

Growing up in the West, university education was still seen as privilege and a gift, and I was terrified that Bob Hawke was more concerned with The Australia Card and Expo and crying on telly over being caught womanising, than taking care of tertiary education. For the first time in my life I realised that studying within the sandstone walls of Melbourne University was not a right, like I had grown up thinking.

Rather, it was a present to the future, from a politician who swept in like a tornado and shifted the soil and planted the seeds of a new Australia. The suburban Australia of my happy, healthy, golden childhood.

He really did change my world, and define us as The Lucky Country.

Vale Gough.

Thank you for the life I have been able to live.

…From The Ashers

There’s a reason why I don’t watch the news, or any stuff on television other than the footy or fluff. It’s just too hard. It makes me have too many feelings, and I might not be in control of what those feelings are. The show might go in some direction that I’m not prepared for, and I might end up with things in my head that I can’t shake.

The only things I like in my head are stories of happiness and pictures of rainbows.

Or something.

Tonight I watched Four Corners, knowing that it would be flint-hard. Because sometimes I guess you have to look at the burning and blinding harshness of life. Sometimes you have to knowingly step out of the bubble. And sometimes it just gets burst for you.

That happened to my friend Penny. She has always been tough and edgy and quirky. She has an attitude that lets you know she is sharp and witty, but also that she feels all of the things. I guess it’s because she is an artist. And you know how artists are, they often seem to feel too much, but when we watch them, it’s what we adore. We love them for showing us their hearts.

Tonight I didn’t want to see Penny’s heart on the outside.

I wanted her heart to stay inside, calm and warm and peaceful, ticking along like a fluid clock, not missing any beats, not being smashed into pieces because her son had fallen prey to demons, becoming like so many young men in rural Victoria, addicted to ice. Penny and her son’s story is one of success, and it shows us that thing that we all intuitively know; unconditional love is what we need to embrace these boys, bring them back into our community, and help them to heal.

Ethan has been one of the lucky ones. he has somehow, with the love of a strong family and consistent support, come through the horror of the demon possession, and stepped into the light. His eyes are bright, and they shine with potential and sparkling, cheeky intelligence.

Unfortunately at this stage in our understanding of this drug, he is one of the few.

Just thinking of it all makes my throat tighten. I don’t know the answers. I don’t know what ‘should’ be done. I don’t even know where to begin, but I know that somehow Penny’s fierce lioness heart has helped her boy to find a path.

I hope there is enough love for the others.

Did you watch Four Corners? 

What do you think we, as a community need to do?

…From The Ashers

Have you ever watched Sex in the City? I have never seen a complete episode, until just now. Of course I knew who the characters were- I’ve seen enough for that, so it wasn’t difficult to follow, but my goodness that show is tripe. (And no, I do not like tripe, or, in fact any visceral products.) So why did I watch it? It was the ep where Carrie went to live in Paris, and on her last night in New York she had dinner with her four friends and she said this simple thing:

Today I had a thought, what if I had never met you?

That distilled me, right there.

What if?

What if all of the people that we have loved and then lost in our lives, had never even begun?

What if we never had the opportunity to have our hearts touched, our minds known? What if we never had the privilege of having people in our lives who know who we truly are, understand what our secrets mean to us, and love us for the things we value most about ourselves?

So even though the loss burns and burns, like holding your fingertips on ice until the cold becomes numbness and then inflames, and the pain somehow gets worse with time, not better, what if, what if, we had never met them?

That would be worse.

…From The Ashers

Once upon a time, a boy decided to take two girls on an adventure walk.

The girls agreed, not because they liked walking, but because he assured them they would see something really cool at the end. They heard him say it was a lighthouse. The Cape Woolamai Lighthouse.

The weather was hot, the dry and scalding heat, without even a drop of cleansing humidity, that only Victoria can produce. The walk was long, made longer by the lack of air and the dense beach-scrub and the sand that shifted and sifted its way through the mesh of their fancy runners.

The girls whinged and complained and carried on about how long the walk was, and how this walk better be worth it and how damn hot they were. They looked straight ahead at the back of the boy’s head, or down at their feet, quietly grumping about how their runners were getting ruined by the sand, how boring this walk was.

They wanted to stop and go back many times, but they spurred themselves on by thinking about how good it would be once they got to the lighthouse. They imagined the view of the lighthouse glinting in the sun, bright white against the IBM blue of the sky. They imagined it would be worth it all. In the end.

By and by, and seven hundred and eighty-five whinges later, the boy turned around with a grin and a flourish. Here you go girls: gesturing to the sign.

Woolamai Light.

No house.

Just a light. On a pole. Like a streetlight, but not as interesting. It seemed that they had heard him incorrectly, so intent were they on the idea of something. Something that didn’t even exist.

NOT a lighthouse.
Image Source: K. Eggleston

The girls went through the stages: denial, anger, sadness. They told the boy off for tricking them and making them walk all this way, in this heat, for nothing but a light on a pole. They felt like they had been deceived. Completely ripped off.

So whilst they harangued the boy over the hoax, he just smiled and smiled until he finally said, “Happiness is a journey girls, not a destination.”

The girls went quiet.

And finally, they smiled too.

How is it for you, is happiness the journey, or the destination?

…From The Ashers