Marcel Baaijens: July 2008

I started posting a photo-a-day this month...wanted to share some of the photos I have collected over the past two years, I wanted to blog but as I am discovering for blogging sake! I have little time to write which each photo on a daily basis. My intention has always been to have both text and images in each post. The texts I added to the photos were merely title or identification. Was I hiding behind pretty pictures? Maybe I did. Maybe I was too much 'in process' to write. Maybe I was just kidding myself.

I am sorting through my belongings I stored prior to my departure for my journey of transformation. I am back in New Zealand, the place I called home before I left. Maybe this is the actual closure of my journey, the return to the place of departure, a place of test really as it is now I can truly compare myself to the self of two years ago. Not that would be a very objective comparison, but a comparison nevertheless. A comparison that could conclude with a 'yes' I have changed or a 'bugger' I am still the same.

Rather silly to even contemplate such question as with time we all change. When you return from an epic journey filled with profound moments you are bound to have been effected by the experiences along the way.

Al I can say really is that I am very aware in the changes in me and that there is no turning back to being my old self. Being back in my familiar environment I notice that despite all those changes, it is easy to slip back into old patterns, old scripts, habitual behaviours, reactions and thought patterns. I am lucky in a way that I am aware and that I now have a choice... fall back into or hang onto those old patterns and behaviours or let go and move on. I am determined to move forward, yet it is not automatic.

While sorting through my belongings I am faced with thoughts I had two years ago, thought and judgments of what belongings were deemed assets worth keeping, memento impossible to live without. In the west we are constantly reminded by advertising that we are defined by what we own and have and that our degree of happiness is dependent on what we own and have.

I must say that I am pleased to discover that I had stored warm clothes, very convenient in winter, but I also discovered clothes that I find hard to believe that I wanted to keep them. I am pleased to discover belongings that are still as practical and useful now as they were two years ago. But there are so many possessions that feel like a burden to possess right now, taking up space, consuming my energy as I have to do something with them. Even just giving them away requires energy and thought as I don't like to throw away items that may be of value to others.

I know the reasons for keeping stuff, as 'one day they might come in handy' was one rule I applied as a sorting criteria two years ago. This time my criteria have changed. I have learned that whatever I need will be provided for, even BIG things such as a house. I was going to build a new house on my return to New Zealand, but I no longer have to. My new partner Luke has a house, a house where I am invited to be 'at home', both in a physical and metaphysical sense. An amazing gift really.

So what to to now?

Well the last thing I want to do is create more clutter, so right now I will stop my daily photo month theme, well rather suspend it for the time being until I have a series of images that will convey a message of some sort or something to write about. All my photos I will make public one day, simply on a site or a blog, so till then I will get back on track with my sorting process and I will leave you with an image of a model railway track that I have kept for years and years, a track that I have decided to let go of. With the letting go of the track I also let go of the ambition and dream to build a romantic and super large model railway complex. I can let go of the tracks, the dream... as I am happy to be in the here and now, to be just me, a me that does no longer need a model railway to feel happy like a child. I no longer have the need to create my miniature perfect little world with a train running through it as there is a whole world out there that I can let into my life.