Back to the future.

 So, the two weeks away from reality have ended and the return journey is now underway.

Already , there's a delay of an hour, which could be longer before it ends, so we're camped in the main departure lounge watching the sun go down and keeping ourselves happy with some of Spain's finest vino and each others company. We've spent the last two weeks doing what we wanted and going where we wanted. We've watched fireworks , seen snakes , talked to cats and marvelled at Flamboyances  of Flamingos as they they made their way across the late evening sunsets.

Let the good times linger .

But that's the point isn't it. The good times have to end so that you can earn the points to make other good times. My biggest problem with the end of this round of good times is that I've spent a lot of the time thinking about the other things I could be doing with the times when I'm earning the points. I thought about it and then I thought about it some more. I started thinking about it before the good times to be honest and I thought it was a good idea to look at the other ways ,so I did and they were good. I'd made my mind up on the change of path and how I'd have it started when we came back from the good times , it felt too good not to go into the future without the new ideas of a freer way of being about how I could live and work so what was I waiting for. I didn't have to trudge along the same old path, drive to the same old place, sit in the same old traffic queues . No!

 I could use my talent and my skill to forge a new way through the everyday and get another step closer to being the person I'm destined to be.

 The problem with me and the good times is though ,when the times are good, I tend to forget about the times when I'm earning the points. It's a learned pattern, a fault if you will. When the times are good, let em roll. So they did. They rolled right up to the end and here I am now , around round of earning the points waiting for me tomorrow. 

I have to be fair though, there has been a change this time around. There's most likely changes every time around, I suppose I just don't see them because they tend to be small, a change of feeling here, a new way of looking at something there. All small but changes non the less. 

I am going back to the points round and I'll be earning them for the next round of  good times because, I want the good times, whether it's the Flamingo sunsets or the slow steady  prospect of actually putting thought into action and doing something to make that personal difference, they're all good times, big or small.

I think the fact that I'm doing this again is a pointer towards a change and  the really good times ahead.

 If I actually do something about the other stuff 

 I just haven't noticed the change yet.

 So, 

I come back to this place.

Several years  of self exile and the more recently witnessed global events that have seen the world simultaneously come together in some ways and become even more fractured in others. All part of the life that me and millions of people are now living.

What did I pick up along the way? What have I witnessed about those around me as they struggled and continue to do so, through wave after wave of the dark and stormy emotional sea we've set sail upon ?

What indeed...

I've witnessed the best of people. The heartbreaking spectacle of love given to strangers whose struggle was suddenly a shared one. The goodness of the human soul, displayed in countless acts of charity across the globe, people united in a common cause, sometimes united in their shared grief for those that had been lost. Once these happenings  were witnessed, they can  now never go away.

We've struggled on, those waves threatening to capsize us at any moment, some got swept away but we carried on, looking for that light on the horizon , the one that we knew was somewhere just out of sight. We knew that the world was changing and that would cause the waves to be even higher before the storm blew itself out. We had to keep going, the light of possibilities not yet known growing behind the heavy cloud , a different world awaited us, called to us, life would be different when the sun broke through. And then suddenly, we hit land , we smashed into rocks, the shared vessel of our long and arduous journey breaking apart beneath us throwing us onto the wet cold sands of this unknown island. We sat there, huddled together, waiting for the dark to pass and the sun to show us where we'd landed.

When it did, some of us wished it hadn't.

 Far from the new unspoilt lands of the future we'd imagined, we found ourselves in a land that was alien but at the same time a mirror of the old one we'd sailed away from. It was as if the old had stowed away with us without us knowing it.

  In this new land where  shoots of future growth could have been pushing sunward, tendrils of old growth still clung on, strangling the new and hopeful life with all the bitter tightness it could . All of that struggle we'd been through, all of the cost just to find ourselves in a world more the same than the old one had been. And what was even worse, was when the sun reached its highest we could see just how much of the old growth there was, how much we'd have to get through before we could reach the places we'd hoped to find at the end of all our trials. At that moment, we knew the choice we had to make. We looked back at the sea we'd crossed and it was then that we realised that we couldn't go back, there was nothing for us to go back to. The only choice was for us to make our own new way through the old growth, cut it back where we could  and make our own path towards the new, the unknown, the lands of the future we'd crossed the stormy sea for. So, cut it back we did and slowly we've been able to make a path through, towards the new lands.

 On the journey we've found ourselves faced with obsticles the likes of ,the lake of stupidity, it's depths yet to be truly known and the mountains of denial, their own stark grey faces sheer and nigh on  impossible to scale . These and many more we'll discover as we travel on but travel we must. This is the land we've chosen to call home now and only together will make it to the other side.