LeliaThomas.Com

June 2007: It’s a small world, or a year in Australia.

I decided last month that for June, I would forgo my usual monthly summary, in favor of writing about my first year in Australia. The 20th of this month marks when I left the United States a year ago. I landed in Melbourne on the 23rd.

I’m very happy to say that after a year of being here I feel I made one of the best decisions to date. I love Melbourne, and there are many things I love about Australia. I still don’t know that I will stay here after my degree, but I do know that the events that have taken place here have changed my life forever. It all comes down to learning, really. Learning about myself. Learning about life. Learning about the world.

Ireland vs. Oz

Life’s a gamble, they say, and whoever those ubiquitous jerks are, they’re right. I had my heart set on Ireland when I was young, fully planned to somehow study there and learn Irish Gaelic (dying language, but who cares!), but my compass hand changed when I fell in love. I know…how cliché. That’s not a subject you see here much, me being the hopeless romantic, but I shockingly do have a pretty deep, non-reptilian, non-scathing-sarcasm side, and it’s what led me to Australia.

When that relationship fell through, just shortly after I was accepted into Swinburne University, I was angry and hurt, but I decided to come anyway. That was a gamble, too, because what ultimately settled my coming here was a private little coin flip. I would be ashamed to admit just how many important life decisions I’ve made based upon heads or tails. So I came to Melbourne: burned out, pissed off at innumerable amount of things and brooding. Click the thumbnail below to see the last picture/piece I created in the U.S. It about summed up my feelings:

As time has passed, though, I’ve learned from the experience. I know many people come out of such heartache with the notion that they will never work so hard for another person again, and believe me when I say I’ve been down that emotional track in the last year. Yet ultimately that hasn’t been the conclusion I’ve come to; rather, I’ve learned to mostly give only as much as I can expect in matters of the heart. If you can count on, and more importantly, expect someone’s willingness to uproot his or her life for you, then you owe that person no less devotion. But it is foolish to strive as hard in an unbalanced relationship; someone will get sorely hurt.

When you really think about it, it’s basic, common sense–kindergarten material, even. You don’t so readily share your crayons with the bratty kid who breaks or steals everyone else’s. Likewise, on a much larger scale, you don’t move to Australia for someone who won’t consider moving to the United States for you. Yet I’m no longer ashamed of the decision that laid the foundation for my coming here. If anything, it shows I will do almost anything for one of life’s most valuable emotions: love. I cannot regret any of it, for it is has helped make me who I am. My job from here is to work with what I am. Nothing more, nothing less. Looking back on this website, words that I wrote when I was 18 mean even more now in regard to these things.

When I look at all the sliding doors that have been in my life, all the things that have happened, I see where some of them occurred for a reason. I see where so many heartaches maybe helped lead me to the most joyful relationships I’ve had in my life….Sometimes things are hard, and some days are darker than others. Yet, how could I give up one day or trade in one hour? Why should I? Who is to say that a single second might not bring me growth or happiness? Who’s to say that a single moment wouldn’t be vital in grabbing hold of one of those flying, automatic doors, halting it to let an amazing person step into my world? –July 10, 2005: Sliding Doors and Reasons

Love is not why I moved here in the end.

I moved here, because the coin landed on heads, and that’s that.

In God we trust, as the U.S. coins say.

Learning about myself.

There was something I learned quite quickly when I came here. It was that I am surprisingly okay with how I’ve turned out, and I didn’t really expect that. I have my quirks and eccentricities, my ideals and my prejudices, but overall, I turned out all right. (Maybe if you ask other people, they might disagree. I don’t know.) If you had attended my high school, you would understand one reason why I am so shocked by this.

Before I moved here, I experienced what I guess you could call an incredibly stressed, restless turmoil that had me feeling like nothing in my life or about me was right. It seemed like every angle I was trying in personally and otherwise was getting me nowhere. Stagnant. Not up to par. The feeling that I was just dumb enough not to get anywhere and just smart enough to recognize that.

Yet when you move to the other side of the world and have to learn to laugh at yourself and put yourself on the line constantly, things can’t be stagnant anymore. In the process, you end up recognizing that maybe you aren’t the brightest kid on the block, but it doesn’t matter at all: you’ve got your way of doing things, and if they’re working, that’s all that counts; our ideas of “bright,” and “right,” for that matter, are inherently flawed, anyhow. It’s something I’ve always known and believed in the back of my head, but for once I’m finally seeing in my own reality where all those years of going against the grain worked. Screw convention. It’s overrated.

I’ve also learned to let go. I hadn’t done that in a long time before coming here. But as the months have passed, I have literally felt knots go from me, and I figure I’ve probably added a year onto my life, to make up for all the junk food I eat. That’s great. It means I can eat more junk food.

One of the greatest gifts I’ve given myself over time, and cultivated even more this year, is the ability to be free–to think, feel, believe and act as I truly perceive is right for me at this time in my life. When you’re honest with yourself, you know what you have to work with, and you can let go of the rest. The world is a much brighter place when you are real.

Learning about life and the world.

For some reason, despite my age, I’ve always had a good grasp on time and how it moves very swiftly. I wanted to do big things, as soon as possible. It drove me crazy in high school, sitting there, standardizing myself in a bureaucratic system, wasting time. I was seeing the world around me, but it was so passive and so unsatisfying. I knew there were things out there to learn, to touch, to feel, to try, but I had to put myself out there. It also had a lot to do with the old waiting game.

One of the best things about coming here is that I’ve learned I haven’t been the only one with that restless-curious feeling, and that’s such a relief. I met far too many people who thought it was weird that I wasn’t going on temporary exchange, but for a full-blown experience, but then there are a lot of us.

Lots of Norwegians, as you can see.

And li’l ole me, from Tennessee/Mississippi. (I more willingly claim the latter.) To quote one of the most annoying songs that I adored with my whole being as a child: It’s a Small World.

Indeed, it is, and I love seeing it. Globalization and global travel may sometimes be sad things, but the awareness that it can create in humanity is nothing short of spectacular. There are some things from cultures that I will never understand, because they aren’t my cultures or my religions, but I’d be lying if there wasn’t a little spark of hope in me when I see so many cultures put together. There’s that hope that maybe, just maybe, despite all humanity’s many faults, we may one day somewhat get the concept of a “melting pot.” Maybe. Or we’ll all kill each other, at which point we’ll all be too busy pushing up nuclear daisies to care, either way.

It’s win-win, really.

I think the point for all of us is to have done something different. Maybe moving overseas isn’t the experience you’re looking for, and that’s okay, but I think we all have dreams, magnetic pulls in one direction or another, ideas that we can’t let go of at all. So don’t let go of them. There’s no need to; you have as much time as life will afford you, and that time is well spent if it’s going toward something you love. The road there might wind a bit, and so you may end up on a different path than originally intended (in Australia, rather than Ireland, for instance), but it can work out. And everything will look a lot different for the experience. Sooner or later, things will fall into place.

Australia for a year.

Strangely, outside of living for nine years in Tennessee (cue eye bleeding), this is, as far as I can remember, the longest I’ve lived anywhere or at least as long as some of the other places. The specific places of my childhood…they’ve all faded a bit. I’m blessed with a good memory. I can still remember whole conversations from long ago, but little things are fading, like the street names of where my family and I lived at certain times, or the name of the lively, pre-flushed goldfish. (Though I still remember Flipper, who died thanks to the Wal-Mart fish that was supposed to be his friend.) I believe this sort of memory “fading” has to do with our brains not needing various information, and so, while the data is available somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds, it is not easily recalled; only that which we deem necessary, and sometimes not even that, is readily available. The street and goldfish names just aren’t that important anymore, which is the progression of life, I suppose.

The progression of life is fast, like a train rushing down continuously aging tracks that will one day run out. There’s so much I want to do, so many things I may not get to do, even when I estimate an 85 to 100-year lifespan, and yet if I follow life to the best of my ability, at all times, I don’t think it really matters when there are no more tracks. I will have done enough in the amount of time that I had. That’s quiet contentment, a beautiful release.

That’s what a year here has done for me. I really wouldn’t change a thing.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Solovei

“Lots of Norwegians, as you can see.”
If you want to find out what it looks like in Norway, then check out my blog :-)

Lorrim

I like your outlook, and how you have come to acceptance about your life, your trials, your joys, and your learning experiences. I am proud of you for that. :)

Edrei

Past is what makes you, but the present is what defines you.

In the melting pot of cultures, we redefine ourselves, we learn, we grow. We don’t change, we just become better versions of our true self.

Glad you enjoyed Australia as much as I do. It’s officially your first year here. It’s been 3 years for me this July. Despite everything that has happened, this has become home for me. Looks like maybe, just maybe if it already hasn’t. It’s become a home you’ve returned for you too. :)

CJ

Be proud of your decisions and accomplishments. It sounds like you’ve grown quite a bit as a person in the past year. Keep it real and life will be far more enjoyable. Sometimes a flip of the coin really is the best method of making decisions. Been there many times before.

By the way, I’ve truly enjoyed writing and artwork since I stumbled across your site some months ago.

Smile often and enjoy life.

Ina

Hi, I can’t believe it’s been a year! When we first met you, you just arived. You didn’t even have a garbage-thing outside… :D Looking farward to meeting you again, hopefully in July.

See yah soon :D

Tors

Sorry I’m late here, but what a beautiful, thoughtful post.

I moved to Australia for love, but love wasn’t the only reason and neither should it be for anyone else.

You are very wise. :)

kav p

Haha, apparently we both wrote articles within a matter of days of each other with ‘it’s a small world’ in the title, and I’d forgotten about the title of this one when I wrote mine. How rare.

It’s a wonderful feeling when you find an ounce of satisfaction in everything you’ve done or has happened to you so far when you look around you and see how proud you are of who you have become.

I may still whole-heartedly consider Tokyo to be the arsehole of Japan, but recently I’ve been finding myself reach a point where the bad things that I see around which would normally upset me take on a different light; instead of being things that get me down, I’m starting to see them as challenges. Things that I can conquer. Things that I have the power to NOT get down about. I look at some of these things now and I smile to myself, because I realise that I’m not going to let Tokyo affect me like that. You have stages where you’re almost looking for the depressing things just so you can show that it’s not going to hurt you anymore.

That’s provided you have the freedom to walk away at the end of it, of course! Particularly if it’s not going away itself anytime soon.

Welp, that was a lovely little schpeel. I wonder if it made any sense. :|

July 2007: Guns Bring People Together » LeliaThomas.Com

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