Life is a collection

"Life Events are like stamp collections, as you collect them it seems uninteresting, but in the end you have an impressive collection" (Katrina Rohr)
I was talking to my great friend Katrina today, about our lives and what we have done so far, when she made the above statement. Instantly I was blown away by the sheer insightfulness of it. It is such a true thing to say, the fact of the matter is that to us our lives always seem somehow complicated and boring, when in fact the opposite is rather true. When you talk to friends you think 'Wow, if only what I was doing was as interesting as that', when in fact that isn't what we should be thinking at all. All our lives are interesting, and we are all being dealt the experiences we need to have and have also chosen for ourselves. My decision to return to Slovakia to live has changed my life massively from the direction it was originally going to take. In the future I will be able to look back and say, 'hey I was successful at that, I did something interesting for a few years there' and that will make me proud. At the moment its a hard slog, and I dont look at it that way, even though really I should. We all should.
Out of all the collections we ever make, our lives are by far the most important and the most interesting. They define who we are as human beings, and shape the people that we become. If it wasnt for these collections, well you could be a very dull person. Its the only collection I know that is added to no matter what you do, fail at a job, it added. live somewhere but then move away, it added. Love and then it falls apart, still added.. Such an interesting thing.

Our collections make us individuals, they define us, they reveal the true us. We can never hide them, and really, with such a beautiful thing in each of our possessions, should we really want to?

Perceptions

This weekend, many families around Slovakia spent some of their time at a cemetery, to commemorate a holiday of the dead. It has connections to the Catholic Holidays of All Saints' Day (November 1) and All Souls' Day (November 2). Personally for me, this Idea of going to a cemetery and celebrating the lives of family members is a foreign idea. It is not something that really happens in Australian culture. When someone first told me of the weekend I thought that it was a bit of a strange thing, why would you go and spend time somewhere like that? Cemeteries in most peoples mind are spooky places, that are not really ventured into. Especially not at night. Then I started to think, why is this such a strange thing? surely it is a beautiful time to spend with living family, and also remember those that may have played a large role in your life, or at least contributed to your family being the group of people they are. In my culture the last time most of us will think of a dead person is when we go to their funeral, we dont visit gravesites, and if we do, it is very irregular and not for a substantial amount of time. Why is this? because we are so concerned with a material world of the living. To me this seems to show how many of the people I come across here are quite open, often comfortable in who they are and on the whole nice people. For me it seems to stem from they know their own backgrounds very well, they are comfortable with where they have started and are able to look foward to the future.. In western culture we spend alot of time looking for where we have come from, because we never held onto it. Then there is a thirst for knowing what people as close to us as our grandparents did as a profession, because we never bothered to actually find out. Maybe this is why now we have so many tv and radio shows who are exploring the pasts of peoples lives, and finding out about heritages. In this quest for material wealth and self gain we have forgotten about the most important things in our lives, family...
TO take this whole matter a step further I was reading the paper today, and found that in Taiwan people are now beginning to hold "living funerals". These are often held by people who are suffering from a terminal illness, which has left them in the final stages of life. It is seen as a great way for the person to find closure and be able to face death with renewed courage. Now, again, froma standpoint of a person that sees funurals in the traditional standpoint, this seems like a strange idea. However, again, it doesnt necissarily mean it is wrong.

I guess what I am trying to say is, perhaps we should learn from these other people. We should be celebrating each other as people, not just caring about ourselves. If we all cared about each other and our families like these people obviously do, then wouldn't we all be much better off and perhaps more complete people than we are now?