Life is short. You hear it all the time, but you know, in all honesty, LIFE IS SHORT! Too Short.
Tonight we had a reminder of just how short it can be. Matt’s grandmother called to tell us that his dad is in Intensive Care. Not sure what is wrong just yet, but whatever it is, here’s hoping it’s nothing too major.
Which brings me to the main reason we really want to pack up and leave the socially accepted “normality” behind. Because Life is Short!
You see, back when we were in our teens (yes we’ve been together for that long) Matt’s mum was diagnosed with a bone disease….. living in a regional area, you don’t always have the best acces to the right specialists etc, so when she got progressively sicker, 5 years later, by the time she did get to see the great specialists in Sydney, they told her it was too late and she had advanced cancer. She passed away aged 48.
Life’s too short.
During that time, we had moved to Sydney to have huge careers, make money and live happily ever after. But, life had different plans for us, because when you lose someone like that, you tend to re-evaluate what’s important in life. So we gave up on the careers (or at least the path we were taking) and moved back closer to home. We forgot about buying a house, and stocking up on those amazing material posessions that everyone seems to judge their wealth by, and we started a family.
We knew, that when Matt’s Mum passed away, she owned a house, and she didn’t care one little tiny bit, all she cared about was her children, her husband, her family. When you see that for what it is, you soon realise, that the “stuff” we accumulate in our lives means SO little when the reality of our own mortality faces us. So since that moment, our lives have not been about acquiring a shiny new car, or a big flashy house, but about our kids, our little family, our awesome little people…. about love.
My dream for the past few years has been to live on the road. Anyone who knows us, knows that I daydream about exploring this country, but since we’ve decided to create set goals and an exit plan out of our businesses and really live the dream, part of me has been saying “WOW” do we really want to do that, to give up everything we’re building”. Our businesses are growing strong and it takes a whole lot of hard work to get them to that point. Do we REALLY want to work so hard only to leave it all behind to travel?
Well tonight, I remembered again how fragile life is. YES we do want to leave it all behind to take our kids on the road and experience this country in a way that so few are privileged to do. YES, we do want to spend that time, learning, enjoying, discovering, sharing, because we only get one chance at life and sometimes, no make that ALL the time, we should follow our hearts and our dreams. If it were my turn to face my mortality I’d find it much harder to have not traveled than to have not bought a house, and so it is, the plans to do the unthinkable continue…….
