My Life Anthem for (the remainder of) 2008

I have found a song that reflects my desire for this time in life (please refer to my post on Life Anthems, 19 June '08). I found it a couple of weeks ago, but it was a long search since I want it to mean something.

The song to live by for me is "Never going back to OK" by The Afters. It talks about coming to a point of 'Godly discontent' and making a 180° turn. It's a constant reminding that I've been there and made a change, that although the old habits might let me turn back without noticing, I am in a constant fight to overcome the life where I have wasted my days, "complacent and tasteless and bored"...

The song's words:

It's not the end / But it feels like it is / I'm waking up / Like I'm back from the dead / I'm stepping out / And I feel so free / But as long as I'm moving it's all right

I feel alive / And it hurts for a change / And looking back / It's hard to believe / That I was cool / With the days that I wasted / Complacent and tasteless and bored

But that was yesterday... / We're never going back to OK / We're never going back to easy / We're never going back to the way it was / We're never going back to OK

This discontent / Like a slap in the face / Of mediocre / I've had enough of this place / This party's over / And I'm moving away from the frills of you Beverly Hills

That was yesterday... We're never going back to OK / We're never going back to easy / We're never going back to the way it was / We're never going back to OK

We're here to stay / This is our time / Our only life / Our chance to live

"Never going back to OK" • The Afters • 2008

That relaxing could cost so much...

We want to take a weekend off to go do the stuff we love in a place that is beautiful and relaxing. But I've come to realize that the above 'mission statement' is deceptive in its simplicity. My main problem is that it costs so damn much to just get there and to have a bed to sleep in, nevermind actually doing something. I'm a bit annoyed by this system that is driven by capitalism. They say "money talks", but unfortunately money speaks a different language than normal human beings, and right now it is yelling at me. And I don't even know what it's saying...

Oh the wonder of Jane Austen and the English language!

I've just finished Mansfield Park over the weekend (for the third time), and it has bowled me over once again. Jane Austen is one of the greatest writers I know of. And it is not because the girl always gets her man.

Reading a Jane Austen novel is all about the journey, never about the destination. It takes you down the pathways of human character through valleys of irony under the skies of impeccable language. I can lose myself in the English she uses - I mean, who says stuff like "fanciful impediment"?

And the way she describes the world around her is just so... judiciously exact (another one of those delicious words ;-p). Although all her novels are immersed in her own period, the way she paints the human experience is absolutely timeless, and makes me painfully aware of how fragile the borders are that we take for granted in life.

About babies (and my 'stuff')

Just the other day (OK, it was 2 years ago - how time flies) I wrote that "everybody" was getting married, and I even had the photos to prove it. Today I'm reporting (with slight trepidation) that "everybody" is having babies.

Of course I don't mean every single person, and they're not all from the first 'wedding phase', but it suddenly hit me: Laurico had a baby last week, Maryke told me a few months ago that she's pregnant, and friends I know from church are having their baby in September, not to mention that Christien and her sister had their babies less than a year ago.

I don't know. It's a bit unnerving to think of the 'baby phase', because it forces me to think of our own plans to have children. And I don't want to think of it. Just the thought makes me VERY uncomfortable, not to mention scared. Why? you ask. Because I know what an enormous responsibility it is to be a good parent, and I want to be the best mom I can possibly be, but I don't feel like I'm ready. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready. How do you prepare for something so life altering? And to think of all those nice, selfish little pleasures I'll have to give up for a VERY LONG TIME. Like sleeping in. I LOVE sleeping in, it is one of my favourate things in the whole world!!! Or reading for hours. Man, I'll miss that. Or watching DVDs with my husband in the evenings. Or just deciding in the spur of the moment to go out to a restaurant or go watch a movie - that's a regular favourate with us.

I've heard from enough people that, although your life changes drastically, you'll never regret it. I believe that. I'm not afraid of change, in fact I believe that "change is the only constant", and without change, everything will always stay the same. I'm serious - just think about that for a moment.

No, it's not the 'change' that gets to me, it's the 'giving up'. To lose stuff I really treasure... even if it is small stuff, it is still MY stuff.

An Eternal Year

Wow, I can't believe today is the 1st of July - we have officially stepped over the halfway mark of the year. It's strange how relative time can seem. I find with long periods of time where life remains unchanged, that the days seem to blend into this single, indistinguishable piece of continuous history. Then, when I think back over the significant events that happened over a few years, I can honestly say I have trouble placing them on a timeline. Did that happen in 2003? or maybe 2005? I have no idea. Weddings, births, people changing jobs, moving to different cities, going overseas... it all happened in the past year that started in 2002.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a unique fate that is destined to plague only a few people like me, or if - just maybe - it is one of those universal human condition that we all suffer from? I'm hoping for the latter - I feel non-standard enough as it is...

Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who wonders at the wonder of memory. The very wise Fanny Price had the following to say about it:

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out."

~ Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (by Jane Austen)