A Backward Viewing

Every now and then it’s good to look in the rear vision mirror at some of the more interesting (read, adventures) things you’ve had in your life. Those interesting things are alot like a vase stuffed with freesia’s. They’re fragrantly heady, delicately divine and they last for longer than a moment.

I’ve jumped out of a plane, free falling to one thousand feet before opening the ‘chute. That’s a blast! Actually it was a one-time only act of insanity BUT I lived another day to tell the tale. I’ve indoor rock-climbed, boated up the Yangtze and stood on a milk grate (I’m little!) to see over the front bow of the 16-footer I was sailing under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I’ve climbed peaks and only one mountain, got caught in an ocean rip and just lived to tell the tale, had coffee with rock stars, chatted with writers, poets and television personalities. I’ve drunk an incomparable banana milkshake in Cromwell and watched people ballroom dancing in the Square below from my friend’s living room window in the senior australian austrade ambassador’s residence in Shanghai.

I’ve been to the back’o’Bourke to say g’day to Fred (Hollows) as he rests peacefully in the red dirt and eaten jonny cakes (damper made from water, flour and yeast and baked between fence netting over a camp fire) and drunk billy tea with friends.

I’ve flown with deer hunters in Hawke’s Bay, got up to the kind of mischief that only heli-pilots and deer people get up to (if you delicately manoeuver a helicopter over a chimney the down draught has a way of making the occupation of being a chimney sweep obsolete!!) A word of warning. If a pilot tells you he thinks he’s running our of fuel, check the fuel gauge yourself. Sometimes it can be a ruse to leave you clinging to a branch up some tree while he goes to have tea and scones!

Do you think your life’s been boring, don’t! It’s not really about who, what or even when. It’s about the fact that you did. Go on, have a little think. What you come up with might amaze you. And ask yourself this … all things considered, what would the point be of having done it any differently? Our lives, they are what they are and finding the celebration in that (in my mind) is enough.