Expansion in a time of contraction...

Consider this another entry to my list of long running rants along the carpe diem continuum. Another realization about life and living that has managed to wedge its way into my slightly less cramped cranium in the last few days – and it goes something like this.

Time is linear. We move along it or down it knowing (or not) that with every day we get older, hopefully wiser, and inevitably closer to some sort of end. That is undeniable in life and it is becoming increasingly undeniable in our year away. At last, unofficial count, we have a mere six weeks of time before we bundle our bags and bodies onto a few planes and head for home. Seems incredible. But like a sudden brush with mortality, the calendar is starting to remind me that our time down under is becoming short and that we need to keep working at living here, rounding out the experience every day.

But that’s becoming increasingly hard. There are travel arrangements to be made, a house to clean, boxes to buy and then pack and a multitude of things related to life back home that are beginning to come into focus. And the list continues to grow. Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, I still have some things to learn at school, the boys have homework to do and friends to play with, we have places to visit, restaurants to try, life to live and even new friends to make….Yes, new friends to make.

Recently, after meeting a really nice dad who was willing to let Colin practice with his basketball team, I remarked to Linton that it was “Too bad we hadn’t met him earlier”. Not to say that we have not met tons of really nice people, but that here was someone who, with more time on our docket, I could see wanting to get to know better. And what I guess my point is, to this whole blog, is that we should still try and get to know him and any other people who we see at the café or bump into on the tram, whether we have a day, a week, or a year left in our journey.

But, as I have already said, it’s hard. Time is indeed linear and it drifts away from us or, conversely, pulls us along at a speed that people and relationships cannot always keep up with. Building connections with people, seems to me to be a “rounder” process where we build layers and add experiences like the rings of a tree, eventually connecting us together as people in “bubbles of familiarity”. As time moves along, immutable and unstoppable, our round relationships come willingly, follow eventually, or remain rooted where they are and ultimately left behind. Unfortunately, we sometimes weigh friendship and its value against whether or not we “have the time” or our "bubbles" are in sync.

So while we begin to worry about whether we need to bring home both Aussie animal sticker books or the Wall E bed sheets, we also need to recognize that there still might be a friendship, face, or potential "bubble" in the coffee line tomorrow for whom we simply must find the time.