He was sitting at a cafe on a trendy alley off of Little Flinders Street. Everyone there looked liked artists of some sort or other, dressed in their autumn best, writing or sketching their latest inspiration into black notebooks.
With his dark brown Kangol beret and a cup of overpriced hot chocolate on the table, an incredible sense of insecurity and loneliness came over him.
"I'm a fraud," he thought.
He didn't belong there.
This impression had planted a seed of doubt into his future plans of living in a big city back in the States. He had plans of "making it", of chasing a dream.
But there was a deeper doubt, a doubt that had already been growing for some time.
Many times people chase after not the thing they want the most, but the thing they want second best. It's much easier to take failure when the thing you were working so hard towards, wasn't what you really wanted in the first place.
A year ago, he asked himself what he wanted to do, what he wanted to make of the finite time that he had here in this universe.
Up till now, he had been chasing phantoms and had let himself be drawn to Sirens on this ocean of time.
Looking back though, he had no real regrets. Wandering for him, had given him direction.
After New Zealand was Melbourne and Melbourne was a wake up call. He had found it ironic that though cities are supposed to be the pinnacle of civilization, it's the place where you find the most uncivilized behavior. The city attracts money, money attracts people, and with only so much money and space, people begin to hate people and treat each other as such. But it wasn't all bad, he had made a few friends and got to see a lot of interesting things.
After Melbourne was Jindabyne, a small ski resort town and it's here he's discovered the joy of a simple life with just enough distractions that he can handle.
Through these waves of change he's been able to wash away a bit of what he thought was important, but in reality wasn't. He's been able to get a good look at himself and get a better understanding of his strengths and weaknesses.
While in Jindabyne, on a special day, he reread a journal entry written exactly one year ago. He had wrote "I can't leave sand castles[...] I have to leave something that can withstand the waves, something that touches the infinite in this finite time that I have."
It made him smile and think to himself, "We're all making sand castles on the shore of time, we would be fooling ourselves if we thought otherwise. But so what? The only thing infinite is finiteness."
The entry reminded him of an old interview he read where Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist, told the interviewer, "I see death as a beautiful woman. She says, 'pay attention and try to get the best of every moment because I am going to take you.'"
The thought made him smile and he adds to it, "...And She drives away the Sirens and sings a song that had been residing inside me all this time."
I just need to listen.
