I slept very well the first night that I arrived back, and woke up early in the morning. It was still dark. I sat in my bed, because I’d heard something that I hadn’t heard in a long time: silence. After a while, as the light began to rise into a pale grey sky, the call of a little bird broke the silence for a moment. I saw it jumping about outside, drinking the rain that had freshly fallen on the leaves of the trees in the garden. I was able to take in a deep breath of fresh air. I looked outside and even though the sky was covered with clouds, I was able to see a lot of it – it wasn’t crowded by buildings. The size of my bedroom was around the same size of the whole apartment where I lived in Japan, and as I walked out into the kitchen for some coffee… I started to feel as if I had a lot more space. I must admit, this good feeling came later. The exact moment I opened my eyes I was a little confused. A little disoriented. I looked around, and I wondered where I was. It hit me, that I was back in Australia and I started to panic.
Oh no, what happened to my dreams of travel? Why wasn’t I on the road? Had I made the right decision? In an instant, I forgot about all the sleepless nights, all the heavy bags I’d had to carry, all the headaches I’d gotten from trying to figure out a new language while looking for something simple at the supermarket…. how was life meant to be interesting now that I was back at my boring old home? It’s amazing how the familiar can feel like the right place to be, even when we don’t like what’s familiar to us anymore. It’s as if we enjoy longing for a dream, rather than living it. Travelling around became so familiar to me, that when I made the right decision to come back home… it still felt like the wrong one for a short period of time. Thankfully, I shook it off. I told myself that every single life in this world is interesting, and there is no use to do things just so we can show our life to others. The point of life is to be lived and felt, in any way that we so choose.
Before long, I was walking around the house enjoying all the things I had missed. The fresh air here, the taste of the water, the sound of the rain, the hot cup of chai that I always used to enjoy. The start of another adventure, one that’s going to look different but feel just as good as when I first took that plane to London in 2016. I plan to take the next few days for rest, and not to do much, so you may or may not hear from me over the next few days. It’s good to take a pause some times. But one thing’s for sure, I’m going to keep writing and I am going to keep sharing, and I don’t know what exactly is going to happen – but I know that it will be worth reading about.
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