A lil something something about me

Good morning. Its a  cold day in Cape Town today. One of those days that you just wish that you could snuggle in bed the whole day! mmm… and yet, here I am, early in the morning, bright and shiny and at work.

I’ve thought a lot over the weekend what I wanted my first personal entry to be about. And I thought, well, what better way to start something personal, than with a personal view… perhaps a conversation I had with someone that prompted me to FINALLY start my own blog.

This someone I had a conversation with, Maude, well, we went to primary school together. She was only at our school for a few years, and then she disappeared. Now I can’t say that we were that close, because if we were we would have stayed in touch after she left, but we didn’t. But then again, we were in primary school… You don’t think much about these things when you’re that little.

Anyways, so a few years later, I thinks it was on a school reunited site, we got in touch again – this must have been on about 2002 or 2003. We had a few discussions on where we were in our lives and how things were going… and then it ended again. And then of course, came FaceBook. I found out about it through a friend, went on to it, joined the millions of facebookers and well, found Maude again. We chatted again, exchanged email addresses and then didn’t really chat again.

Until last week. It was her birthday you see… and her birthday is on the same day as another friend of mine, so I remembered. and I wished her via an online chat programme.  And we got to talking.

She was a bit surprised that I knew it was her birthday, unfortunately i’m not a very good liar, so I had to tell her that FB told me it was her B-day, and the fact that it fell on the same day as another friend, well, that just made me remember.

Our main discussion was around our seemingly stop start relationship. You know how some people come into and out of your life for a period of time, there for a few hours, days or years and then suddenly just gone? Well, technically, I’ve known Maude probably for just over 20 years now and yet I haven’t seen her since we were I think 10 or 12? And yet we are still in touch. Somewhere along the way we had both made a decision. A decision that allowed us both to be open to someone we once knew. To get in touch again.

We were talking philosophically about life and how the choices we make define who we are. Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

Maude: Everything has its time and place its incredible really how it all works this jigsaw of ours

me: it really is people are brought into and out of our lives… sometimes just to show us or teach us one small thing… that will change our lives forever… and others can be in them for years… teaching us and guiding us slowly and gently…

Maude: I couldn’t have said it better yes each person is part of the spiderweb some threads last a life time lessons to be learnt – you are a wise soul, not many people can see it as that. does that sound funny?

me: i like to think of life as a tree. (p.s. no, it doesn’t sound funny… some webs break, some take longer to form… its a really good analogy). in the tree thing…. you know its kind of fate vs what you make of it type thing. i believe that our lives are mapped out based on the lessons we need to learn. how far we get is up to us…

Maude: very true

me: each decision we make brings us to a new branch, the branch we take determines where we end up. so there are many possibilities for our fate… but we get to choose how we get there.

Maude: yes and we get to chose how we go from branch to branch – choose who we are. love that analogy

me: for example… i could have come back here (to Cape Town) after high school… but i wouldn’t have met the people i now have in my life, the people i don’t know what i would do without out. yes, i would have met others… but not these guys. and they are amazing.

Maude: you chose a certain branch and you chose well. some people choose weak branches, they can feel that they are weak, they even break but they don’t jump across to a different one they stay hanging on to that same branch. sad – it takes strength to jump, says a lot about you

me: exactly . our decisions define who we are… but the choices were  predetermined… a bit hectic hey?

Maude: nah I agree fully

me: wait… i’ll write about my theory one day….

Maude: you blog? you should blog if you dont already

And so here we here. My first entry. And, after thinking about it for quite a while. I am finally here. I made a choice, chose a branch. So Maude, if you’re listening. I would just like to thank you. And also say, that I am really looking forward to seeing you on Sunday. For the first time in about 20 years.