“Was it life changing?” my daughter, Zoe asked me this morning as I groggily sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. I’d gotten home from nearly three weeks in South Africa the night before, had managed a few hours of sleep, and was now on my third cup of coffee and it wasn’t even 7am.
“Was it life changing?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Yes, of course, and no, not really.”
And it’s not because I’m jaded by my recent travel to Bali last November, Nepal this past April, and the last many weeks in South Africa where I traveled with my 21-year-old daughter Ruby, and my 79-year-old mother Suzy.
It was incredible to tool around in a jeep on a large private animal reserve in South Africa and to stumble into a herd of elephants taking down trees for breakfast. It silenced me to get as close as we did to the pride of lady lions whose faces were covered with blood – “lipstick,” our guide called it – after they’d just taken down an impala – a kill we’d seen them circling for, heard them attacking deep in the bush, and watched them emerge from afterwards. It was ridiculously amazing to watch a mama rhino and her baby lumbering along a shady dirt road, taking their time as our vehicle kept a safe distance behind. The closest I’d ever gotten to these animals – cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, leopards – was in magazines or on T.V., and it was both oddly wonderful and disconcerting to be so close to them. One day we drove right up to a lion napping in a dry, sandy riverbed. He raised his head to look up at us and then went back to sleep. That night, as we drove with flashlights, we came upon a leopard crouched in the bush, his canines sinking deep into a warthog he’d killed earlier.
But was it life changing? Yes, of course, and no. No, because after a week of nature and stars – courtesy of the spectacular Southern hemisphere – we were back in another world— a world where lipstick sits on the MAC counter in Heathrow International Airport, and the woman applying eye shadow on my exhausted eyes is telling me about how much her 12-year-old likes to read, and I’m nodding and wondering if she’ll be pissed that I’m not going to buy anything, but had simply stopped by her counter to see if she could make me look a little more awake after one 11-hour flight and heading into another.
Yes, the African savannah with its dried grasses and soft green hills was dreamy, enchanting – staggeringly beautiful. And yes, the township of Soweto in Johannesburg—with its heart-breaking mix of tin roofed squatter houses with no electricity and plumbing, and its open water pipes (watering holes for the poorest of the poor, who gather to wash their hair and clean their dishes)—left me dry-mouthed and quiet. Yes, two hours in the Apartheid Museum is not enough time to take in the cruelty and injustice of Apartheid, which, though it “ended” over 21-years-ago, seems just as real as ever with the economic disparity of blacks in South Africa. Yes, I wanted my daughter Ruby to see all this, wanted both of us to be changed by it, and yes, not a day later there I was in Heathrow seriously considering a $130 bottle of Jo Malone perfume.
I don’t mean to be hard on myself. I’m just trying to come clean about this life changing business: this ability of mine (and probably yours) to wake up and come alive when you’re in the midst of so much wonder, and then to fall back to sleep, resuming business as usual.
I would love to wake up changed; more generous, more loving, less concerned with the petty shit that feels so real; Will I get this blog post out in time? Will more people sign up for my classes? Will my money last all summer? Will I ever put to rest this obsession with my body and its size? Hell yes I’d love to sort out what matters from what doesn’t, to actually wake up. But it doesn’t work like that for me.
It’s a daily process of waking up and falling back asleep, perking up and slipping away again. Wake, sleep, remember, forget. Wake, sleep, remember, forget.
Life changing?
Only time will tell.
Thanks…. Your inspiring me to think of the simple:) miss and love you, I’ll be signing up for a class soon:) send the girls my love.
❤️Jessica
Hi Laurie, I loved your take on S.Africa. We were there a few years ago and could easily visualize your beautiful descriptions of the animals and the tin roofs of the impoverished. Life-changing?
Of course I hadn’t thought of it in such poetic terms as this but I would agree….yes and no. I’ve been put back to sleep! Welcome back!!! Loved the pictures. Gina
Awesome Buddy! I continue to be “in awe” of you…your authenticity, your true guts to come clean and be real, and to take risks. Your writing…I’ve always said it, is amazing! I love you sis…keep taking the journey…and I will too! xoxo
Thank you . Resonates deeply with my truth .
We all wait for that “ah ha” moment. When we are suddenly hit with an epiphany. A life changing “I get it now, I get it all.” But for most of us, it doesn’t. Revelations seep in. Quietly.
It’s so wonderfully refreshing to to read that life changing moments sometime don’t happen in an instant. It’s a process. Thank you for this reminder. I love your blog and I thank your sister Amanda for keeping me in the loop for these.
This post is brilliant. Thanks for putting it down and sharing with us. You are an inspiration
I always enjoy your writes Laurie. Thank you.
Love to ‘hear’ your voice and miss you being part of my week. We ask these questions to which the answers come slowly, if ever. Otherwise what would we ponder?
As a transplanted South African (now living in Canada) it was lovely seeing my home through your eyes. And I wonder if it’s not so much about life-changing as it is about soul-growing: making space for more polarities to flit about happily inside us, in all their contradictory glory 🙂
we must be in the same energy zone or writing zone or something. I think these journies outside ourselves wake us up enough so that we don’t go back to sleep all the way. I’m not all that sure about life changing events or things or courses or promises anymore.
Sometimes…something does happen and our perspective is shifted and nothing we do when we go back to our daily lives feels the same again.
See you in Story Slices!
“I would love to wake up changed; more generous, more loving, less concerned with the petty shit that feels so real; Will I get this blog post out in time? Will more people sign up for my classes? Will my money last all summer? Will I ever put to rest this obsession with my body and its size? Hell yes I’d love to sort out what matters from what doesn’t, to actually wake up. But it doesn’t work like that for me.
It’s a daily process of waking up and falling back asleep, perking up and slipping away again. Wake, sleep, remember, forget. Wake, sleep, remember, forget.”
Thank you beautiful friend and writer. As always, your truth-telling always brings me home.
Sherry–I so miss your voice. So clear. So true. I concur with all of it!
I’ve always wondered about the whole concept of “life changing” and whether experiences that are described like that actually alter your life in terms of lasting forever. I think the intensity of the initial input into our memories lasts for days or weeks, but its long term change sometimes fades into the passage of time. Not profound, but just a thought. Thanks for your insightful blog…always!!
Amiga, always good to read your honest open-hearted essays. They never fail to provoke internal thoughts. I’m moving next month from Mexico and will be in the States more often, maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance to attend one of your workshops. Hope to.
Thank you and yes, exactly!
Thank you, Laurie. Lots to think about in this post, especially as most of us are taking time away from “ordinary life,” this summer and need to negotiate a re-entry into our own beautiful worlds.
As usual, thank you for keepin’ it real, Laurie! <3
Ahh Laurie, I love your writing, always. Right to the quick it is, zap-meaningful in a superhero lightening bolt coming out of a finger way. We are headed to SA in autumn and I know I’ll be chewing on a lot of these things as I do when I travel, which I find is hard to put into words. More appreciation for yours.
Honest, and nakedly true.
Thank you, Laurie. So resonant and real.
I think you nailed it, after a summer of life-changing and not travel.
Wake, sleep, remember, forget.
Good description of the surrealness a person experiences from international travel.
And how to fully express that into words? The juxtaposition of corrugated tin roofs with no water or electricity, and then Duty Free $130 perfume within 24 hours. Like a sling shot. WTF? Did I really just experience that?
Brilliant. Thanks for the reminisce of feelings.
I really love your writing, Laurie!