Moving On In The World!

Floating down the famous Amazon River on a cargo ship with a hammock strung at the top deck. The girl I love swings next to me. It's a beautiful day and the picturesque landscapes that pass me can only be described as the type you see in exotic documentaries. The types of places you dream to be at when your at home wishing you were anywhere but home. It's also at this specific point, like something just triggered in my brain, that I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And why am i lucky you might ask? Well that's an easy question to answer in many ways, and more difficult to answer in others. In an easy and simplistic way this can be summed up with sheer level of happiness i have currently achieved. This may not seem like a lot for most people, but for me to be happy is the most important aspect of life.

Bring out of the cliches if you will, but something I've always said is that we're only on this world for a short time in the broader scheme of life. In realistic terms most of us will not account for any life changing or forever remembered event in life. We may not cure cancer, or win a Noble Prize, but at the end of the day even those people are forgotten. History proves that history is forgotten, eventually. I couldn't tell you who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1959, nor could i tell you who invented the vaccine for polio. What i can tell you though, is that i appreciate the effort and cheers for keeping the human race kicking along. Your contribution to human life has been especially noted and appreciated, but in the broader scheme of life so is everybody's contribution when they make even the smallest positive impact. It may be the baker who provides you with bread everyday or the farmer who provides you with sustenance to live through their livestock or fresh produce.

The thing is, everybody has a role in society and everyone should appreciate life and be happy. That's not to say you shouldn't strive to become more, or that you should settle for mediocrity, but what you should ultimately strive for is being happy and then everything else will fall into place.

Now saying this is not as easy as making it happen and it is easy for me to say this from the position I'm currently in. Floating down the river of the one of the greatest natural wonders of the world. I'm laying in a hammock somewhere deep within the Amazon jungle and life couldn't get any less complicated. For me this whole journey has been one of discovery, learning, understanding and appreciating all that is being presented to me. And this is not the end by any means either. There is work, sacrifice, suffering, doubt and all the other challenges of finding happiness that continue to reside in retaining happiness. Just because i realise happiness in this present time doesn't mean that i am going to feel happiness forever. However, what it has done is given me the thirst, the desire and the encouragement to pursue it. It hasn't come easy, despite what people may think, but then nothing worth appreciating ever does. So now this is my motivation!

I have had the taste and i want to continue to pursue this. They call the good life many different things in many different places of the world, but it always comes back in its truest form as happiness. The feeling that you are not only contented, but you are also joyful of the way your life has panned out. You are excited about facing the challenges of the future and the anticipate the reality of the future with a strong and focused mind. The thirst of life, the Elixir of Life, living forever, praise some form of God, live a good life, karma, don't do this, do this instead, rules, regulations, societal expectations and norms, acceptance and whatever else comes in between are share differences and similarities interpreted completely different from one person to the next.

Out of all of this there can be only one true factor that resonates amongst all the obscurity of differences. What is important is the thirst for life. This is not a preach, by all means take it as you will, this is more intended as an appeal for those who have drank from the metaphorical cup of happiness and have realised their thirst has yet to be quenched. Pursue the rest of it and realise that it may not come easy, but when you finally get to drink from that cup again the harder it has been the more refreshing life will taste.

Teaching the kids at Ludoteca about Australia!

Ok so i might have forgotten a few things in between the last time we crossed paths. It was mid September the time i wrote that passage and a lot has happened since we last communicated. My level of communication over the last 6 months has been poor to say the least, but all within excusable reasoning. I have once again finished an extended stay at the volunteer organisation Pisco Sin Fronteras in southern Peru. An organisation established in response to the 2007 earthquake in Pisco that destroyed 80% of the town and left hundreds of thousands of people displaced. Even after 5 years of the earthquake and 4 years of operation by Pisco Sin Fronteras (|PSF) there are still many things to be done for the people of Pisco, but slowly that emphasis is finally being shifted more heavily to the local administrative governments as it should have been from day 1. However, that being said it has been a remarkable journey that PSF has been apart of over the last 4 years in helping to rebuild not only the physical infrastructure of Pisco but also the emotional and psychological damage created by the devastating earthquake 5 years ago.

Finishing off the last concrete slab of the 600m2 sports pitch we constructed in Tupac Amaru!

It has been another 6 months at PSF beginning way back in March and ending up in September, but it has been the most unbelievable challenge, once again, that has been presented to me at this stage in my life. This time around i was responsible for the additional role of being the Project Manager, a position that was equalling rewarding as it was difficult. But rather than go into that right now i would like to try and at least briefly describe my time at PSF. I can't even begin to explain how many times I've tried to sit down and right about this experience. I thought it was difficult the first time when i finished up 5 months back in 2010, but now after another long stint it feels even more challenging. It not only became a huge part of my life, but in my role as project manager it seemed to almost completely consume me into the PSF bubble and leave me without any concept of what was happening around me. 

Plaza del Parque at the end of my time!

Whether it was coordinating and managing jobs of construction and education for up to 60 volunteers from all walks of life at any one time, or whether it was trying to personally deal with the emotional roller-coaster that is PSF when you spend so much time becoming apart of a community that had been stripped back to its very basics because of this atrocious disaster. Some of the things i have seen, some of the living conditions i have seen children growing up in, some of the stories i have heard or the people i have met i will never be able to describe no matter how many words i throw down or photos i publish. And maybe this is why it has always become such a difficult experience to talk about. Maybe that is why the PSF community has always stayed so tight and family like, because the experiences you witness and are apart of in Pisco are so foreign to anything you could begin to explain to people back home. The bonds you create with these people seem to be forged with the undeniable notion that there is nothing like this back home and it is only these people that will ever be able to understand the kind of personal transformation that you achieved while experiencing the challenges of Pisco.

So in the short form that is where I'm at right now with my life. PSF is behind me, but never ever forgotten. And i know as PSF takes its next challenging step that this will not be the last time i cross paths with the world of volunteering. Actually I'm currently sitting in a hut in the middle of the Sierra Nevada on the Carribbean coast of northern Colombia, but there is a lot to fill in-between that and where i last left you that will be saved for another time! 

In the next addition there is the trip into the Amazon jungle, more hammock cargo ships, Iquitos, crossing into Colombia through Leticia, flying up to Cartagena and all that falls in-between!