Every Word Matters
Traveling around Australia is great fun, no doubt about it. One of the best sides of it is traveling on remote roads, experiencing nature and enjoying the space while you are out there. It all changes dramatically once you get to the big city. Melbourne is one of them.
A hundred and fifty kilometers south of Sydney is the beautiful town of Kiama, our first stop. Shops, cafes, beaches, lighthouse (oh, there are many of them around Australia) and the don’t-miss Blowhole. The weather is nice, white clouds paint the sky, the swell gently approaches from the big open-wide ocean and as it hits the coastal rocks of Kiama.
Road trip around Australia – sounds good right? Absolutely. But before we can actually head off, we’re on a mission to shrink the content of the caravan by 50%. At least! Clearly, we should have made ourselves familiar with the concept of Becoming a Minimalist, way before we started packing.
After months of preparations, planning and fantasizing, our journey around Australia is about to begin. Well, our caravan is not ready yet, in fact it’s quite unorganized, as we’re learning the meaning of Minimalism. Final preparations before we head off for a trip around Australia.
I’m rubbing my eyes, tilting my head from side to side, pinching my cheeks right and left. Is this really happening? It’s one of those things you plan in your head for a long time, and when the time comes you just cannot believe it’s actually happening. We are about to leave our ordinary lives behind and hit the road, the great Land Down Under is awaiting, Australia here we come!
We all know sugar is bad for us, and yet most of us are addicted to it. Soft drinks, cookies, cakes, chocolate, you name it. But sugar is not just in the obvious sweets we consume. The secret lies in hidden sugar. It’s everywhere…
It’s the 21st century, and we are all rushing and running around, chasing success, wealth and dreams. But do we care to stop for a moment and think – how far have we come? What have we achieved? What do we already have that we should NOT take for granted?
When thinking about traveling with children, most people would probably imagine a luxury holiday in a nice resort on a Pacific island, or a flight to classic Europe to see major attractions including Disneyland of course. However, that’s not what I’m talking about. Ever thought about a Caravan Road Trip?
Living away from home? Torn between your obligations to your own family – wife and kids, and the family you have left behind – mum and dad? You chose to live in a different continent, so that’s the price you have to pay – living with endless, consistent, torturous GUILT.
Once you hit the middle age you start experiencing the probability of “the end of the road” around you. Our parents are aging and it’s hard to accept that, however while this is a natural thing after all, you suddenly realise that You and your surrounding friends and colleagues are surprisingly aging as well. Who would have thought!
Every parent would tell you the teenage years are such a joy. There are so many theories and explanations about why it is the way it is, effectively way more complicated than what it should be. Add to that the online social networks and we got a much wider problem, because now it’s not only the other school kids we have to worry about, it’s the world wide web. Life as a teenager can be quite complicated. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Many of us get dragged by the capitalism of today’s western society, often unhappy with what we’ve got and forever chasing life to gain more and more. While capitalism focuses on the financial side of things, the flip side of the coin is how well we cope mentally with our own reality, with the choices we have made, and our state of mind. Why do we lack any appreciation of what we got, and carry on with our lives feeling unhappy and unfortunate?
Here’s an interesting exercise for you. Take a pen and a paper, write down your list of personal “core values” in order of priority. Revisit your list and make sure you prioritise it in the right order – top item is the most important value in your life, and so on. The list would change over the years, as we progress and age in life, so the order of your personal values when you’re in your 20s is likely to be different to when you’re in your 40s.
When was the last time you told your mum & dad that you love them? That you appreciate all they have done for you over the years? Unfortunately mum & dad would not be around forever. We don’t know how much time have we got left , before things will change, forever.
You only live once, so make the best of it. Your kids are the most important thing in your life, so make sure you spend as much time as possible with them. Don’t let other things get in the way. Be there with them, be there for them. Enjoy it while you can.
