Omaira Gill :
Sometimes life teaches you that you have to just go with the flow. I learnt this the hard way when I was making a trip recently for my son’s appointments. They say in Greece you can tell a good day from how it begins. The same holds true for journeys. If a journey starts well, you can expect it to continue along the same vein. If not, you know it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Our definition of home changes as we grow. As children, it is obviously where the rest of our family is. As we grow, home is wherever we are renting for that period. When we set down our own roots, we break away from the home of our parents and settle into homes of our own. Whether a mansion or a mud hut, the draw of being home is immortalised in culture from epic odysseys to Dorothy’s magic shoes that would take her to the only place she really wanted to be, home.
In Homer’s Odyssey, our hero Odysseus tries to return home after the Trojan war. The journey which should have been a simple one ends up taking him over a decade to complete.
No matter how hard he tries, he can’t return home, cursed by the deities to undergo one delay after another.
It’s not quite an epic journey, but last week I decided to undertake my first trip with my two children, on my own, that wasn’t a direct flight. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I laughed ominously. It seems I should just learn to keep my mouth shut, forgetting that the deities were listening and rubbing their hands with glee. This is a lesson that will be repeated until I learn it.
Thanks to me missing my connection, which in turn was thanks to Lufthansa not having a child-friendly bone in their bodies, the journey that should have taken me around 6 hours ended up taking 12.
A comedic catalogue of events ensued that saw me stranded away from home for two weeks rather than one. And no matter how hard I tried, it seems like the universe was out on a mission to teach me that it doesn’t matter how much I plan or budget, life was going to go rampaging through my plans like a bull in a china shop.
I was reminded of this again when I ran like a lunatic to catch a train that departed just as I ran up to it on the platform, forcing me to purchase a new set of tickets and wait for the next one. Sitting with my children waiting for the next train as the adrenaline dissipated from my veins, finally I thought “Okay, life, now you have my attention. What’s the lesson you want me to learn from all of this?”
There is a Yiddish proverb that says if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. I suppose it’s not a bad lesson to be taught given the circumstances. In all my planning and scheming, I of all people should know better.
Ever since my son’s diagnosis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, I have become somewhat of a control freak. When life goes off track, I can’t handle it.
This was the lesson that Odysseus had to learn in the myth too. The more he pined for home, the harder the deities conspired to keep him away from it. My plans were dragged wildly off track, and I would have to learn to handle it whether I or not I felt like I could.
So what’s the lesson? That life can’t be micromanaged. Life is like an explosion that can’t be contained and doesn’t run on schedule.
All the information that you are given is that life is going to happen, so make the mistake of planning for it at your own peril.
Through it all, my children took it all in their stride. The five-hour stay at the airport with their frazzled mother, their trip doubling in length, the missed train, the barrage of unexpected expenses didn’t register with them at all.
Obviously I have a lot to learn from their attitude to taking life’s journey in your stride.
(Omaira Gill is a freelance journalist based in Athens)
