“Don’t start your day with broken pieces of the past. Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day and it’s yours.” – Zig Ziglar
There are days that leave me speechless with the unexpected turn of events. If there is anything I have learned in all my years is to embrace those surprises that suddenly cross your path. Not all of them are positive, but they all have a purpose, whether you undestand it or not. Acceptance, is one of the most difficult things to do, followed by letting go, but once you figure these two out, it is liberating beyond words.
Moving around the globe and living in different cultures can be seen as a pain in the ass, or a fathomless blessing, depending on who or what you compare it to. My life has been anything but conventional, but would I change any of it were I given the opportunity to travel back in time? Maybe some of it, but why would I want to turn my back on magical years that expanded my horizons, values, perspectives and ultimately, language skills? Yes, of course there is something intrinsically priceless about having grown up in one place and being able to go back “home” to meet up with childhood friends. I never had that, because “home” was wherever we found ourselves at the mooment – Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, India, Thailand, or Germany. But each of these countries opened my eyes to the wonders of their cultures, embedding a piece of it in my soul piece by piece.
You learn to see and appreciate kindness from different perspectives, and to celebrate the small things rather than just the milestones. More importantly, you meet special people along the way to turn your world around by simply being. Life is never just a bed of roses, and there are of course those who also turn up and wreak havoc, but in time, you learn to accept these people as valuable lessons and bad examples.
I will sound like a broken record when I say that when I moved here six months ago, I had no expectations whatsoever of what my life would be like, taking on a new job, culture, language, and even lifestyle. But for some reason, all the countries and cultures I have lived in and with seem to converge and weave a very unique tappestry here, tying up all the loose ends. The strong African heritage here is so familiar, echoes of my childhood ringing through. The laid back Iberian temperament that resonates within due to my Mexican roots, the sense of family and extended family that is like my own Filipino heritage, and the chaotic order that somehow functions like what I encountered in India and Thailand. Except for the pronunciation of the language here, everything makes sense to me, as if I have been here before.
So here I am, with hours left until the big move, about to embark of a new adventure full of unknowns, about to leave the fishermen and boats behind and face windmills, goat trails and wild turkeys. And the greatest news is that my daughter is arriving for another visit in two weeks and finally bringing the blissfully unaware Cherry with her! All three of us are in the precipice of life changing events, as my daughter is also moving to another country soon. We’ve been living parallel lives ever since 2017, when we both got catapulted into living alone and getting horribly caught up in our nightmares and dancing with our demons. When she moved inland I moved toward the water, now I move inland and she moves towards the water. In constant motion but always bound to one another In love and friendship.
FrogDiva Thoughts 