Posts tagged countryside
Adjusting the Sails

A while ago, a calligrapher friend of mine gifted me the most beautiful card on which were written the words, ‘We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails’. I taped this postcard to the green cupboard just above my kitchen sink and each time I went to open the door, the words would resonate in my head. As time went by, slowly and imperceptibly these words became my mantra. We all had to make changes to our lives last year. For some of us, those changes came easily and we learnt a lot about ourselves in the process. But for others, sailing in a new direction became perilous, especially as our boat turned away from the horizon and the endless dark and cavernous sea surrounded us.

I remember feeling quite daunted by how much time I had at my disposal. I would often wonder whether you could actually have too much time. Long days of little things sounded idyllic but in reality there were too many gaps in the day through which I could fall and become underwhelmed by nothingness.

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A Place to Belong

'I lived a 'suitcase existence' never forming an emotional attachment to any of the places we were sent to because I knew my time there was temporary. On our arrival at any new quarter, I would quickly unpack our boxes, place furniture and objects around the rooms and hang curtains and pictures. After a while this process became almost automatic, perfunctory. My only aim was to get sorted as quickly as possible so we could get on with the day to day routines. I wasn't building a home as such, I was simply filling the abandoned spaces with familiar things, which would one day be packed away again. '

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