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19th January 2018

Right, Thailand! I need your help. (“Again?!” I hear you mumble, raising your eyes heavenwards.) Sorry, yes. I need you to fix me. Just saying your name is like drizzling honey onto my soul, giving me the sugar high I need to keep me going until I catch a glimpse of you once more from my window seat on the plane, chosen specifically for that moment.

Like an old lover you’ll scoop me up in the arms I know so well, and all the wintery chills and memories of ills will seep from my brittle bones, to be replaced by your comfort and warmth. I’ll nestle against your shoulder, breathing in your characteristic aroma that I’ve dreamt of continuously since our last liaison, as you brush away my tears and dry them with sunshine.

With the tender love of a mother, you’ll nurture me with good food, warm air and blue skies, and rock me to sleep with lullabies sung by the sapphire-blue ocean lapping at the shores.

And if for some reason the spell has been broken and we no longer find ourselves entwined with love…

..at least I’ll have De Mama with me to share Sangsom buckets and dance to tinny techno on the sand.

I’m roused from my dreamy musings by Mum’s frantic nudging, her elbows jabbing my ribs in alarm as the whiskery warthog of a man in the seat next to hers on this 787 Dreamliner is stroking her calf with his outstretched toes.

“He’s playing footsie with me!” she hisses, and I lean over to take a look, before peering over the seat in front where his middle-aged wife is snoring gently, her snood-style hoody pulled up over equally hooded eyelids. The toggle on the drawstring collar is pulled tight, her entire face concealed, reminding me of a slumbering slug in a polo neck.

Mum yanks her leg away from Warthog and passes me the white wine she’s just accepted from the flight attendant even though she has no intention of drinking it. One sip of alcohol and her face is the colour of a baboon’s backside, so I kindly take it off her hands and consume it myself instead. I know, I’m all heart. Mum takes this as her cue to recount a recent incident whereby she and my younger sister, who is also always willing to take alcohol off her hands, attended a local healthy living exhibition. Whilst receiving a skin diagnosis, the therapist pointed out Mum’s ruddy complexion and remarked: “Like a drink, do we?” Teetotal Mum could only gawp at the audacity of the woman, whilst my sister Karen sniggered Muttley-style into the face-hole of the massage table she was lying on.

What she misses out on in alcohol she makes up with in-flight meals and boiled sweets (“essential for stopping ears popping”) and the 12-hour flight passes without further event, save for the diminutive woman in the row parallel to ours constantly popping the lock on the overhead storage cabin and climbing up on the seat like a cheeky capuchin monkey to retrieve some random item or other.

Finally, the pilot makes that welcome announcement: “ Cabin crew: prepare for landing” and there she is: my favourite place on Earth. Thailand. Land of Smiles. It’s like coming home…

Published tomorrow:

The Thai Diaries: Phuket (2/6)

Sam x

Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

The post The Thai Diaries (1/6) appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

Do you ever look up at a starry sky on a clear night and feel overwhelmed by your utter insignificance? In the great scheme of things, you are a speck of dust, existing for merely a millisecond in the history of time. I remember the exact moment in my life that this felt most apparent…

I was backpacking across Australia: a group of us way out in the outback, the dusty Red Centre, camping beneath the stars one night, on a mission to reach Ayers Rock – or Uluru as it’s more accurately known – in time for sunrise.

Now I use the term ‘camping’ in the loosest sense of the word, since we had no tents; we were just lying in a row in our sleeping bags directly on the dry and cracked red earth, hiking boots tucked inside our sleeping bags so that they wouldn’t be stolen in the night by the circling dingos, who sporadically startled us with piercing cries.

Sleeping under the stars

In between flicking on flashlights to see if anything was about to feast on us and brushing insects from our faces, we finally settled enough to gaze silently up at the huge expanse of black sky and marvel at the bright, white, twinkling stars. With not a single light or building for miles around it was probably the best, the clearest, view of the universe that any of us – a group of travelling city-dwellers from around the world – had ever seen.

As we lay on our backs, heads fuzzy from exhaustion and warm beer, staring up at the sky whilst one of the more astute astronomers amongst us pointed out the various constellations, we agreed that we had never felt smaller, or more irrelevant, than at that moment.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by life; to feel like a tiny ant standing at the foot of a giant mountain. Sometimes, I contemplate the scale of a task, such as gathering 100k signatures for my petition (challenging the NHS’s new laissez-faire approach to cancer screening) and it feels impossible.

It’s all too easy to doubt yourself, to ask “why am I bothering?” or “what’s the point?” The pessimist in me mutters “another 40 years and you’ll be dead and forgotten anyway” – which is a pretty dark way of looking at things (although on the flip side it does help keep worries in perspective).

But then I remember that an ant is actually one of the strongest creatures there is, able to carry over fifty times it’s own bodyweight. This video, which I filmed in Costa Rica, demonstrates the impressive strength and resourcefulness of leafcutter ants:

But that’s nothing! A dung beetle can pull 1141 times it’s own body weight, making it the strongest animal on Earth for it’s body weight. Not a rhino, an ox or an elephant – a dung beetle. Think about that for a moment. I try to remember these facts whenever feelings of my own insignificance challenge my sense of self-worth.

As humans, we often measure our value in terms of our job, earnings, looks, popularity or possessions. You don’t need to be a CEO, a celebrity or a supermodel to be worthy. You just are. Being a decent human being is enough; you are enough. But one thing I’ve learnt is that having a real purpose, a passion, a goal, is what gives us a sense of self-worth and what, ultimately, makes us happy.

“Having a purpose is the difference between making a living and making a life” – Tom Thiss

For years I went to work, living for the weekends and holidays, without any real plan or focus. I’d assumed, somewhere in the back of my subconscious mind, that at some point soon I’d become a mother, which would then become my purpose.

My older, feminist self shudders at this admission. Sure, I worked long and hard, bought property and upgraded: from flat to house to bigger house. But it wasn’t the product of a burning passion; I just had a regular managerial job and clocked up the hours. Alas, motherhood was not to be, so then my entire being was thrown into question. What was my purpose now? What had I been working towards? What was the point of me? Years of agonising self-hatred and despair followed. What was the meaning of my life?

Life may have no meaning; but you can create a purpose

Then, one day, I rediscovered my passion for writing – a pastime that had been largely discarded, along with sketching and netball, soon after I left school, to be replaced with the monotony of working-class life; nose to the grindstone. Adulting had taken over.

Suddenly, the cloud lifted and I had a purpose. With renewed vigour, I’d wake early in the morning to write a blog post before work. My articles started getting more hits. I had one featured in a magazine, and then another. I drew on my life experiences and began campaigning to help others on physical and mental health issues, particularly cervical cancer and infertility. My excitement grew along with my stats. I was using my blog to do good; there was a reason to get up in the morning. Perhaps I could have a legacy after all. Finally, I had a voice.

Feeling proud: my first published article

Whenever I encounter a setback and that sensation of being tiny and insignificant threatens to overwhelm me, something inspiring happens – like a retweet by a celebrity or a request from Washington to appear as a guest on a podcast – and my confidence is buoyed once more. A tweet last week to Piers Morgan was read over 203,000 times and later quoted in The Sun. Thanks to the internet, the world is now a much smaller place:

Some might say, “So what?” “Who cares?” Haters gonna hate. The bigger your dreams, the more you’ll come up against resistance to them. If your “purpose” brings you joy and benefits others (or at least doesn’t affect anyone else negatively), then keep your head down, blinkers on and teeth clenched in dogged determination.

On a basic quantum level, all the matter in the universe is made up of stardust. As Moby sang:

“No one can stop us now
 ‘Cause we are all made of stars…”

You don’t have to be famous to be a star; you already are one. So find your mission, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem in the great scheme of things, and pursue the hell outta that shit. We all want to leave our mark, a footprint (and not just a carbon one) to show that we were here, we existed. We mattered.

When you find a hobby, job or some passion that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning and crack on, you’ve found your raison d’être. When you’re fully immersed in that passion, when you’ve found your flow, you’ll experience true happiness.

It’s never too small, and it’s never too late. Don’t simply accept the status quo. If you found your passion at an early age: congratulations! Lucky you. If you’ve not found yours yet, there’s still time (but not a lot; don’t rest on your laurels). 

Try this simple exercise, which can help you find your life’s purpose.

So get out there, find your purpose – whatever that may be – then live boldly: be your authentic self and shine like the star you are.

Now, when I look up at the night sky contemplating the infinity of the universe, I no longer feel irrelevant; I feel exhilarated by the infinite possibilities…

my first glimpse of the sun rising over Ayers Rock

Inspiring links:


Before I die i want to… by Candy Chang (NSFW warning: this one’ll make you blub)
Personal excellence: A self-development site by Celestine Chua
TED Talks to find your purpose
7 strange questions that help you find your life purpose, by Mark Manson
3 unexpected ways to find your life purpose, by Shannon Kaiser

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

The post Finding Your Purpose: The Journey To Stardom appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

My first ever blog, written September 2008 – March 2009 :A 6-month round-the-world backpacking adventure with my then-husband Liam…

www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

The post World Wide Walsh appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.