What are we looking for?

Every time I embark on a journey, I have questions, about my life in some way, I am always out there looking for answers, in a way yes. What better place than out there on your own, hours and hours to look within, search and question. I started on my first journey and this seems to have been the beginning of a process, a search for some thing that I felt was missing in my life. In a way maybe a selfish search, but it was a yearning to go out and through this make a difference in my life, the life of those around me and a group of children that I had come into contact with.

I came back from China, so much had happened to me, and for the first time I actually knew and realised as an individual that in order to move on I had to change. In many ways. Not just say it I had to do it. It’s a long hard slow process and I thought it would be easy. Far from that as it is so much easier to go back to the way that you were. I have been constantly reminded by people, especially my children, how slow the process is and that I have to really work hard at it and actually change.

Then I left for my run around South Africa and this journey took the process further and I began to question myself again, why change what is the reward for change. After travelling that coastline, and seeing what was going on around my country I knew that it was worth it, as through change, we hope that the future will hold something better for us, that is the reward, and as an individual we will be in a better position to enhance the lives of those around us.

There are still so many factors that are at play in our lives, the biggest being the circumstance that we find ourselves in on a daily basis. The decisions that make in these situations will ultimately give us the answer that we are looking for, have we managed to change, are we able to see that our actions will bring hope to those around us that we will be able to enhance their lives in the future.

Circumstance has plagued the Madagascar trip; time and time again I have been forced to make hard decisions, decisions that kept on testing me time and time again. Making me ask myself have you changed? No I was struggling with the process; i feel that I had not managed to cope with a crucial element of it. I feel that a fundamental part of change as an individual is the ability to look beyond yourself. Look at things from another person’s perspective and not at how you would like it to happen. Take their feelings, lives, needs into consideration, they might not be what you want, but it’s their life it what they want it is the things that are important to them. I think if you can accept this and support it even if you don’t always feel you agree, “Give life a chance”. I feel I have managed the process of change.