Another random post

It's been a while since my last post. I've had a few personal issues, and also a trip away for a family gathering. It was a road trip, a full day driving down and back to the area where I grew up. It's always a journey back in time, the area has changed a lot in terms of the roadway - much better quality roads now than when I lived there. (In fact to be a bit sour and political, I can see where my tax dollars go and it's not to the roads where I live! But I digress). It still looks the same, sure the houses have had a few alterations and the trees are taller, but those are only surface changes. The countryside, the entrance to the town, the hills and valleys, they are the same. And it has the same smell, my home town has an indefinable smell to it - I can't describe it but it's there and it says home. Not that I would ever choose to go back there to live, but the place where you grew up holds a special place in your heart.

So it's been a little visit to the past for me. The trip down there is like a time machine, the closer I get the more I feel like the person who left, who of course is not the person I am now. So it can be a little conflicting. And it's a long trip, it's roughly a 10 hour drive, and with stops for fuel and food it usually takes 12 hours. There's plenty of time to think and day dream. Not that I day dream of course, I am totally focused on driving the whole time!!

A road trip is like a lifetime encapsulated. There's the fresh beginning, and the exhausted ending that is relieved to be at the final destination. And along the way a whole host of metaphors for life, if you're a bored driver fed up with the same scenery of emptiness that is most of the journey. There is the road itself, sometimes smooth and seamless and easy to drive on and sometimes rough and windy and requiring a lot of focus to negotiate safely. Clearly just like life, and as unpredictable as to where it will be easy and where it will be difficult.

The other vehicles along the way are like the people you meet along the journey of life. Some are travelling in the same direction, others opposite. Some drive safely, some are reckless, some are so idiotic you yell your opinion at them through the windscreen even though they can't hear you. Some cars are travelling in the same direction at the same speed for so long that you develop an attachment to them, and then when they stop and you don't you feel bereft. So it is with the people in your life of course, nothing lasts forever.

On this trip there were so many roadworks that it felt like there were roadworks for the entire distance. There weren't, in fact a lot more of the trip was clear road than roadworks. But the roadworks slowed me down and were often so confusing trying to follow diversions that they took on a much bigger aspect than they were. Exactly like the obstacles in life, which sometimes take on such a huge aspect that they seem impossible to overcome. How horrible would it be to give up trying to overcome an obstacle just as you were about find a way past it. If I gave up on the journey because of the roadworks I would have had to turn around and go home and the entire day would have been for nothing. Never give up.

Even the boredom of a long trip with little change in the scenery is a lot like life. The internet is littered with memes about living every day like it is the last day of your life. It's a great thought, a wonderful sounding idea, but really it's quite impossible for most people to do this. The reality is of course that we let a lot of days, a lot of our lives, slip by in the day to day routine that we can perform with only a small part of our minds. How many times do we get to the end of a day and just feel relief that it's over. We shouldn't, it's a day we won't ever get back. Don't lose your life in day to day routine so that you don't notice anything about it. There's always something to smile at even if sometimes you have to search for it. Like the tiny yellow flowers on the side of the road that I would not have noticed if I had not been exhorted by the huge sign shouting "SLOW DOWN" to reduce my speed.

There is a Chinese curse that says "May you live in interesting times". It's a curse because interesting times mean a level of intensity that is exhausting. I have lived through a few of my own 'interesting times' and I have always wished during those times for peace. If I drove the entire journey with the intensity required of living as though it was my last day I think I would have an accident, just because of the concentration required to be that intense! Notice your life, find something to like about every day, but don't stress if you don't feel strong emotion about things all of the time. Peace and tranquility are just as vital to a good long life and the small things are sometimes the things we remember.

A long road trip is a blend of intense concentration, distracted boredom, focus on speeds and gears and the other drivers and the state of the road. It is exciting - when a car coming from the opposite direction decides to overtake and is suddenly right in front of you and you're planning your evasive action when it ducks back into the other lane and your heart is still leaping out of your chest. It is boring - miles and miles of the same scenery and no other cars to be seen like you have suddenly been plucked from earth and dropped onto an alien planet, and then another car appears and phew, you're still on earth.

There are the small pleasures - stopping for a break and that first stretch when you get out of the car, and the first sip of tea, or coffee. The road markers steadily counting off the kilometres to the next town until eventually it is your destination that is only 20 kilometres away. Approaching yet another section of road works and watching the little man turn the sign from STOP to SLOW as you approach - worked for me every single time, I have some sort of force field I think ;)

There are small irritations that grow into disproportionately big ones. For me this is those road signs that are supposed to lessen fatigue by asking questions like "Highest Mountain In Queensland?" This annoys me so much, for a start I don't care! Secondly, the tenth time I see this damned sign I want to stop the car and rip it out of the ground, grrrrrr. The only ones more annoying are the ones that say "Still a long way to go kids!" and "Are we there yet?". I guess they do lessen fatigue but they awaken instead in me a massive case of road rage, potentially just as disastrous as fatigue if anyone were to ask me which of course they didn't since the signs litter the road all the way down and up.

So you see, a road trip is a mini life, all the emotions and experiences shrunk down into one day :) Well that was how it seemed for me as I drove home yesterday. Possibly it isn't the same experience for everyone...

Below I will share the signs that annoy me so much, after being confronted with them over and over again on the trip.