Living Free

2 weeks ago I had a home, possessions and a job in sunny California. I've lived in California for the past 5 years, it was always a 5 year plan for me to stay here and life here quickly got comfortable. When I was offered a job here I didn't think it would be this difficult to leave but I've grown to love some people here and the weather... well that one is self-evident. After 3 years I had stretched my 5 year plan into a longer one, life was so good. Yet coincidentally after 5 years, the notion of leaving California replayed itself forcefully in my consciousness due to inside news of the impending threat of a layoff at work and the more I played the scenario in my mind the more I realized that many many signs simply pointed to going now. Still I had shelved my 5 years plan and more importantly my exit plan required a safe place to step to, it was a basic requisite. This was the unknown, it was not logical and it was not safe. Over one weekend of contemplation, the commitment was made to leave and though I escaped the layoffs I tendered and 6 week notice of resignation anyways a few days later.

Prior to California I was living in Vancouver stuck in a relationship and job that was repeating itself and going nowhere. I was not learning and expanding, and in that life I was also denying my girlfriend of 4.5 years her own destiny. Knowing this I was too afraid to let go because the fear of loneliness was crippling. How do you let go of someone that loves you when it seems that is all you have and love is all that matters? My family was scattered across the globe and I was the only one left in Vancouver, she seemed to be the only one that cared. Sometimes you grab life by the horns and sometimes it charges you unexpectedly. Once I ended the relationship I lost my job 2 weeks later, I left Vancouver and drifted for a while and to cut a story short California found me.

California is where I grew up, I've lived in Malaysia and Canada for the past 28 years but the past 5 years in Cali have been such great growth and inner cleansing. The person that is leaving California is hardly recognizable to the one that arrived here with a suitcase full of work clothes and heart full of intention to expand my being. The people make it hard to leave... I don't recall my heart being so heavy in leaving any place prior to this and I had lived in those places for longer. It seems that the bonds I've made here are stronger, maybe it is a quality of being more mature that the relationships also are taken more deeply into yourself. I can look at many faces of the people I have known here and I can recognize the specific quality that has drawn them to me and that I have learned from. Compassion, Joy, Maturity, Humility, Courage, they all wore faces and I knew them personally. I take a part of each of you with me, you are all part of me now, this is how I have grown.

A dear friend of mine threw me a going away party and I invited these people to attend. Someone had made me a book of travel quotes and during my farewell commentary I glanced through it and one quote jumped out immediately and I relayed it to the group. It could not have been more perfect:

"When the Heart grieves over what it has lost, the Spirit rejoices over what it has left."