The Weekly(ish) Update - Issue 0003

The Weekly(ish) Update
3rd AUGUST 2008
Issue Three

Welcome back.

I am not someone who pretends to be smarter or better than the next person, if anything I down play who I am to allow others to show me who they really are. For me acceptance of others being different is important, and because of that it is perhaps easier for me to accept that people are in fact different, I know this, I know this, I know that we are meant to accept others for being who they are, but that doesn't make it any easier when people choose not to see me for who I am.

I have struggled most of my life to accept myself for simply being 'me', this should not be a major thing really, I mean I am not a poor black man angry that I am living in a white man's world where money is more important than life, I am not a young gay guy or girl struggling to express my sexuality because that is what I want to define me, nor am I one of billions of people around the world seeking an identity from within the confines of my religion, beliefs or ideals, I am simply an average guy who has grown up in what I consider a reasonably normal life, a life where I consider myself lucky to have the choices I have, the freedom to be 'me'.

Why then do I have so much trouble accepting that I am who I am?

I know a lot of things, I have seen and done an incredible amount of 'stuff' that I am happy I have done, things that include meeting my birth mother and father, forming relationships with the three parts of my family, going to Australia where I learnt to stand on my own two feet after having everything taken from me over and over again, meeting some incredible people who became my friends forever even though I may never see them again, working at some of the most amazing places on earth and with some of the most famous people on the planet, and learning that 'stuff' had no meaning until I learnt what meant something to me.

I have made many major changes in my life, one of the first I guess was when I decided to meet my birth mother, and then a year later my birth father, because I was unhappy with who I was at the time. Another was when I went to Australia because I was unhappy with who I was at that time, and more recently when I was in Australia and had become someone who on the outside had more than I ever had before, yet on the inside missed everything I had come from that was no longer a part of my life, in short again because I was unhappy.

Why then do I wait until I am unhappy to make changes in my life?
Its funny (my sense of humour again), I lost everything to discover what I had. I have lost a lot of time over the years with people I have learnt to love, but I guess that is the point, I learnt to love what I had because I learnt what it was like to not have 'it'.

I remember one day in Melbourne when the young man living is a room in the building next to mine was found dead, two weeks after he had died. I was so humbled that no one had missed him for two weeks. The same thing could have happened to me and that truly scared me for the first time ever in my life, I can not think of anything worse to happen to someone than for them to not only die alone, but no one noticed, no one missed him for two weeks, and it wasn't until the smell became so bad that the person in the room next door complained to someone that he was discovered.

I have lived within and seen some crazy shit over the years, things that you would never believe if I bluntly described what I have actually seen through my own two eyes, let alone the stories I have been told, because most people choose not to see it, most people walk around with their eyes shut, and when most people catch glimpses of how some people live they are disgusted at people being people, people who are simply living their lives the way that we have unknowingly accepted as being okay, because we choose not to look at or do anything about the truth behind the simple fact that some people have not made the same choices, that some people discover inside them the strength to live their lives differently, right or wrong, and often alone. The reality is that 'life' is all around us, everywhere, in everything.

I have been lucky enough to have the support of many people over the years, because at various times in my life other people have given me the strength to be 'me'. I have gone completely off the rails many times but something inside me wont let go of who I am, not who you see or know, but who I really am, and as hard as it has sometimes been I am glad that my life has allowed me to see 'life' through my eyes, to have lived and (sometimes) learnt, to be 'me', through the good times and the bad.

I read a book this week, the first book I have read in years (I think the last one my birth mother gave me which was by the 'American' cyclist Lance Armstrong – Its Not About The Bike, which was a good story about him surviving cancer and winning the Tour De France, even though I am not a great fan of the man himself) and the book this week was given to me by my adopted brothers wife, which is my sister in-law right?

Its called Smokey Joes Cafe, and is by an Australian guy called Bryce Courtney, who wrote the first book I can remember reading, called The Power Of One. I'm not much of a reader, I gotta concentrate kinda hard to focus on each word on each line, but because it was given to me I made a point of reading it, and being completely honest the story was okay, I kept wanting it to get more exciting and as the pages turned I found myself near the end just wanting to finish it, but I must tell you that I was in tears when I closed the book for the final time and because of that highly recommend it, the story reminds us of what, and who, we should never forget.
But overall I have had a very average week, I have been in a fairly average mood all week, which has not been helped by 'events' that took place during the week, but my mood has not been solely caused by them either, so I have just kept working towards my goals knowing that eventually things will turn around.

I don't like being unhappy, I think with my last job I found something that I enjoyed doing that regardless of how I felt each day I would be able to 'turn on' my happy face and eventually get lost in what I was doing, I think there have been a few jobs in my life like that, jobs that I have been able to connect with and give myself to.

I think that within what I am doing I find a simple change of my thinking, what I am thinking about, changes how I feel, which makes sense when you think about it, and so now that I am in the same situation everyday, thinking about the same things, it is harder to alter what I am thinking about, yet logically what I need to do.

When I left Wellington to go to Auckland to live with my birth mother when we first met, I was changing my way of thinking, when I left New Zealand and went to Australia I was changing my way of thinking, and when I returned I did the same thing, I changed my way of thinking, but each time I did this I changed the situation, the reality within that remains the same.

The point of what I am trying to tell you is that I do struggle to be myself sometimes, that I am not always happy with how my life is going and in my own way try to deal with that as best I can, I believe we all do,

Some old fella called Socrates said a very long time ago that 'Life is Remembering', and I believe that to be true, because life is as much about discovery, and learning to be who we are, as it is about remembering what we have discovered, and learnt to be.

Till soon.. Stay safe.. Be You!!!

.K