The Long Way Home

I don’t usually write posts about my daily life – it’s very mundane: work, home, sleep – you get the picture. Life on a small island in the Mediterranean is very picturesque but hardly ever very exciting. But sometimes, something happens which stirs things up a bit. Today the driver of an excavator hit a pedestrian bridge on the major road which feeds the south part of the island. No one was inured – except the bridge. The problem was that the road was closed to traffic for several hours and, this being an arterial road that needs to be used by several industrial areas and villages in the south of the island, chaos ensued.

I heard about the accident at work and, since I usually have to drive through this road after work, I decided to take the long way home. The problem was that I was not the only one to have this bright idea. Bottom line – I was stuck in the car without moving an inch for 30 minutes in a dusty country road, hemmed in by other vehicles. There was no turning back, everyone was in the same predicament. Yet, oddly enough, instead of fuming, as I would usually do, I felt an ironic sense of inner peace. And I wondered why I was so calm as I stared out of my window at fields of ripened wheat, abandoned farmhouses and patches of crimson clover. For some reason I could not quite understand it, so I drove on, behind the others, at the pace of the fabled tortoise. Around 30 minutes later I had made it to a town on the west side of the island and from there I drove out to the road that winds itself along the cliff tops and would finally get me home.

And as I drove there, completely alone, with a sheer drop on one side of me and the garigue which is so characteristic of this part of the island on the other, it hit me. I felt free as a bird because, for once, I did not have to follow the usual routine. A freak accident had made me take the long and scenic way home and I was enjoying it without worrying about whether I would be back in time to cook or clean. It was here that I realised that my journey home was like life’s journey. Sometimes, in life, we have to take the long and winding road, and although we may finally end up in the same place, we have the time to appreciate the beauty of the places and people around us. We can take the time to stop, to  listen, to love, to breathe. So the point I wanted  to make before I started rambling is this – live life to the fullest, even if sometimes it means you have to take a detour – because life is fragile, life is precious. So take the time to savour the beauty of a wild flower, to smell salty sea breezes, to do what you always wanted to do, to make someone smile …  Take the time  – to find your inner peace and to be the person you always wanted to be.

 

P.S. No I did not have my camera with me, but the scenery was very similar to these pictures :)