Day 550 :: The Beginning of a Great Adventure (Part Three)

Saturday December 1st

I received a comment on a blog post recently. It was left by someone calling himself ‘P****d off man’. Here it is here…

 

 

I am not meaning to be rude to you, but perhaps you need to replace words and phrases like “bail me out”, “dreams” and “closed doors” with something such as “commitment”, “reality” and “contribution”. Life is hard for everyone these days, not everyone has a talent, so perhaps you could channel yours in a more positive and giving way that may mean conforming a little more, but hey ho, we all have to do that to succeed at some point in our lives … and no, it isn’t always pleasant, but sometimes necessary.

Perhaps you could try volunteering overseas?

Contentment isn’t about surrounding ourselves with sycophants, but knowing where we are going, being happy in our own skin and leaving this world in the knowledge that we have perhaps been a little selfless at some point along the way.

Good luck for your future. It’s in your hands.

 

 

To which I replied…

 

 

No, no, quite right. Do I sound whiny and negative? Awful, isn’t it. You just want to slap me. I am pretty happy in my own skin though, and I know I’ve been a little selfless along the way. I’m just not sure where I’m going. Don’t be p****d off. Good luck to you too.

 

 

To which he responded…

 

 

No, I don’t want to slap you, I think it’s a shame that you aren’t able to contribute your undeniable talent in some way that will make you feel more fulfilled.

There are so many places in the world and so many people that could really benefit from your kind nature.

I hope you find that place.

 

 

I felt slightly defensive about his remarks, as was perhaps clear from my response, but I could see that there was truth in them. I am a self-centred so-and-so and no mistake. I always have been. But it’s never too late to change. At least to a certain extent.

 

So for a couple of days after reading that comment, I found it floating around in my head, annoying me. Volunteering overseas, I scoffed. As it happens, I have an ex-girlfriend who did VSO and I spent three months with her in the Gambia. VSO is a great thing, for sure, but it’s far too much of a commitment for me. As with any other job that becomes routine, I fear I’d get bored and grow resentful. Then I remembered something called WWOOFing that someone – I don’t remember who – told me about many years ago. WWOOFing – in a nutshell – is working, on a voluntary basis, on organic farms.That’s all I knew, but when I was next online, I did a bit of reading. And there it was. The beginning of a great adventure.

 

I’m prone to whimsy I won’t deny it. And I go off half-cocked a lot of the time. Sometimes completely uncocked. But reading about WWOOFing and realising exactly what it is and how it works was like a moment of great revelation for me. Eyes opening, pennies dropping, thunder clapping all over the place. I just thought, ‘Oh, so that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.’

 

Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading and I’m currently making my way through a 104-page document that lists the hundreds of habitations in Italy that are willing to put me up and feed me while I help them do what needs to be done and learn everything they’ve got to teach me.

 

At times I’ve found reading about their lives quite breathtaking. It’s not just the nature – the beehives, the pomegranates, the olive presses and the hay-baling – it’s the people. People who say things like, ‘We are curious to share precious moments with you.’ Me too! That’s what I’m curious for! Precious moments.

 

It’s also the fact that discovering WWOOFing gives the past two years a shape and a sense that until now, I didn’t know they had.

 

Which is to say, I feel like I’m going in the right direction, or at least that I have a direction. It feels like the things that have happened in the past two years have happened in order to bring me to this. The festivals fiasco led me to France, and a taste of rural living in France has led me directly to WWOOFing. The more I read about it, the more surprised I am that it isn’t more well-known and that more people I know don’t do it. But this is no bad thing. On the contrary, it means I can help spread the word, which of course I fully intend to do.

 

So there we are. The future is bright, and it has dirt under its fingernails. Lovely, clean dirt.