Hey forumites
Been a while since I made an original post
So far this year has been alright. It started differently to previous ones because I was settled and refreshed after about a month off work. In that month I went to Turkey with my partner. It's a fascinating place - so much history and a rich culture around hospitality. The Turks know who they are. Gallipoli was central to this and I'm glad we went there first up. Was good to pay a pilgrimage. I remember writing on the bus back to Istanbul that it seems like some of the fiercest fighting our species has done has happened in some of the most beautiful places ever. Ironic.
The holiday was also a chance for my partner to see her family after 6 years. They are beautiful people and welcomed me with open arms. We visited her grandfather and sisters graves because they were both important to her. It struck me because we nearly lost my sister when she was 9. My partner was 8 when she lost her older sister and 20 when she lost her grandfather. Some of the stories she has with him are fantastic. He was there for her when her parents needed to take her sister to Ankara for treatment. I couldn't help but weep when we went there. It's still the most sincere thing I ever did on an overseas visit.
I remember falling asleep on Konyalti beach in Antalya just as two Russian guys were chatting away drinking Turkish beer. It took me back to travelling in 2018. You see back then I went to the USA and Poland. I wrote in my diary at that time that no matter where you go in the world you'll find people who you connect with. You see I though I wouod find myself from 2018 when I went on this trip and in some ways I did. But I found myself from 2009 as well - that was the year I went to Vietnam. On the bus from Istanbul to Cannakale (Gallipoli peninsula) I was immediately struck by a memory of when we were in Vietnam and how everyone was on the bus ready to go somewhere. I sat back and watched so much of life take place before me.
I was struck by the beauty of us - humanity.
For some time you see I have been feeling regret that I never did go back to Warsaw in 2019 (before covid). Was it fear? Was it angst? Was it a sense of doom? What was it that prevented me and held me back from going there. Often times in my job now I have a long stretch of nothing happening and I'm taken back to moments in that trip when I was looking forward to so much happening. To so much on the horizon. To dreams being fulfilled. To laughter and jokes I had with people I met. I never went back and I regretted that for a bit. I've come to a sort of catharsis now that tells me that I have held up that storyline in my life too highly. If that makes sense? As if there was some type of truth or lived experience in that potential story if my life that I missed out on. I've realised that this whole theory is informed by me not remembering who and how I was before any of this happened.
If I go as far back as I can in my life, I find hidden and deeper truths. Memories of childhood both good and bad. Interactions I had with friends, strangers, influences... whatever they may he.
A fundamental truth comes out- that the best, deepest, most sincere experiences in my life have come about from conscious choices I have made about my own life. Whether it was to make new friends in high school by going to a youth group, trying a new sport, deciding to go my own way when it came to study, nearly quitting but figuring out what I needed to do, applying for OS exchange only to be declined, going overseas when I was afraid to on my own, coming back and cancelling the plan, swallowing defeat and working on my resume, landing a safe job in govt but then quitting and winging it for a bit and landing in my current role...
All of THAT happened and so much more. Much much more.
The memoirs I have of EVERYTHING in my life up to now are enough. Why go over the same thing from 2018? Maybe because it was a time that was generally just nicer for all of us? Before covid. Remember what that was like?
Now?
Now I find myself in a position in life I was never imagined. A position I once thought impossible. A position completely unfamiliar.
Somehow it's all coming full circle.
I was recently compelled by a memory I had - of a piece of writing that young Hams wrote in school called "The man I wish to become". I wrote thus just after my sister was ill. Ofc I was young and idealistic and religious so it carried a lot of that in it. Which is okay I guess. But for some reasons lately I wanted to go back and read it.
The other day I pulled down a box out of my old cupboard and like magic it was there as if it had been placed for me to take. Strange. I read it and reflected on it. How many of those themes permeate my life now? I don't know. Most of it is unconscious.
I think I'll leave it there for now before the weight of my unconscious is too heavy to carry consciously. Jung was write when he said that we must make the unconscious conscious or else it'll direct us as fate. But sometimes it's easier to leave it alone entirely and call it fate and accept it for a small moment.
I'll leave this song with you. A song that always helps me reflect.
https://youtu.be/P93JhrkedV0?si=9I5ujk2PVEYJUqPc
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