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an island nation I managed to survive a week back at work without feeling a moment of stress and it was wonderful. Problems and various work related topics were discussed around me by other members of the department, but my mind was far far away as they talked. Thinking about where I had been was more important to me than office politics or policy, If I didn't think that most of what happens as work was petty before I left, I certainly do now. There is more to living than going to work. Being away felt so right to me and I was in my element once more. I was on the road seeing and doing things that I had never done before. I was alive and having been able to experience that kind of life makes being back here seem even more strange and slightly sad to me. So many people let their job become the focus of their life and that doesn't work for me. If I weren't getting closer to a certain someone the possibility of going back as quick as I could to New Zealand would be pretty strong. I truly envy those people who travel for a year at a time. They know that punching the clock is meaningless and has nothing to do with living. In fact I see it more as a slow method of dying. Wasted time that could have been used in so many other ways. Oh, for some people staying home and raising a family is everything, but that is not the kind of life that I want. I want to meet and talk with people who have been around the world. Even better than being with those kinds of people, I want to be one of them. There is so much to see and do in the world, that staying in the United States doesn't seem right to me. Okay, I have avoided it for as long as I could, but I guess that I have to say something about the war since that was one of the first questions that people asked me when I came back to the United States. Did you hear what about the war when you were there? Sigh. Yes, I did. New Zealand may be thousands of miles away, but they have a strange device called television that shows pictures on it. They also have something called newspapers with headlines using the words war, Iraq and the United States in them. I may have been in a remote part of the world, but I wasn't wiping my ass with leaves in the jungle. New Zealand is a western country with all of the same modern technology found in the United States. Was I scared while I was there or was I worried about being able to get home? The answer would be a sound no. Did I see the protests there? No. When the fighting began and President Bush made his first speech to the American people, I had just arrived in a town of less than twenty thousand people called Greymouth and my primary concern was finding something to eat. Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington were far away from the former gold mining town where I was staying. Now having said that the man at the motel desk was glued to his television screen taking in as much as possible before he said that the media were as happy as could be. They finally had a war to keep them busy. I nodded my head and made my way to my room. The war wasn't something that I wanted to think about just then. I had other things on my mind. For example, the day before I got into Greymouth I had been walking on a glacier and what might be happening back in the United States was the last thing on my mind at that time. I was on holiday and enjoying life. To be fair most of the local people that did ask for my opinion about the war realized that I am not an ambassador nor do I have any strong political feelings. I was just an American who wanted to have a vacation and the government was doing something to another country while I was trying to relax. Perhaps that sounds selfish and slightly naive, but that was the truth. When I saw the paper outside my door in the morning, I would glance at it briefly and then got on with my day. There was nothing that I could do about what I read and I knew that it would still be happening when I set foot in Los Angeles. The war could wait until my vacation was over. |