The unsung personal hero
Is it just me?
When you return from a grand adventure you spend say half to a full week recovering, grateful to be home and back “in your own bed”. Delighted to see your family and friends and shlep back into the soft old tracksuit feeling of steady routine.
After congratulating yourself for finishing your last load of traveller friendly washing. Sunkissed from drying on that great Aussie marvel of an outside clothes line (sadly our hills hoist was sacrificed for a backyard pool), a small leak appears in your sense of homecoming joy.
It’s not that you want to step straight back on to that “tin can” in the sky and eat from plastic containers for another 14 hours. It’s not necessarily another travel adventure that your meddling mind desires.
It’s far deeper. More existential.
In my mind it goes like this…
Where am I going?
What do I think about where I am going?
What do I want to do?
What do I want to change up or change out of?
Now this is not as simple as the choice of Woolworths or Coles to restock the fridge. I know they are equidistant from my house. I literally just need to choose left or right out of my garage. In the world of Maleny Farmers Choice milk, berries, crunchy granola, and cage free eggs there is not a need to think about where I am going or what I want to change it up.
However, the environment of those safe aisles, piped Michael Buble songs and the mechanical process we employ for restocking our sustenance cupboard does provide meditative introspection on the much, much “bigger things” in life. Perhaps this is why I often walk out of Bunnings without the very item I went there for as I am cast in to the same sea of quiet reflection.
Off the topic of household shopping and back on to my mini existential crisis;
Where am I going?
What do I think about where I am going?
What do I want to do?
What do I want to change up or change out of?
With each day as the jetlag improves my answers to these questions shift from, if I am being harsh, empty aspiration to genuine gratitude. The adventure is like a mad boost of vitamin B12 (allegedly – I have never tried it) where we feel invincible, extraordinary, and very clever. We are supercharged, ready to take on the world with a big strong chest and crushing handshake.
But life isn’t like the trailer of the next Jason Bourne flick. The truth of a really interesting and fulfilled life for me honestly is consistency. Once I am off my adrenaline high I look around at all the beauty that is right beside me created because I am consistent where it counts.
Dramatic changes like a mad day trader on the ASX is like living life with your lungs half full of air, never knowing when it is safe to breath out fully and deeply. Living with consistency is like big, rolling, tummy popping breaths. You know the ones that your yoga teacher is always asking you to do. Consistency takes us where we want to go with solid momentum. It helps us figure out what we want to do as we have our own evidence of where we excel and where we don’t. It helps us feel grateful for what we have built for ourselves and what we have built for others and lastly it enables us to make considered, long-term choices for what to change up or completely change out of.
The unsung personal hero – consistency.
Frith