I don’t actually believe the saying “Jump and the net will appear”.  From what I understand about life, I think that sometimes we jump and we just hit the ground and there isn’t any net.  Nothing catches us, we just fall flat on our faces.   Yeah, I know…ouch.

I come from a family who believes in pragmatism.  My brother, the one that is our mom’s favorite, buys a new truck about every 10 years.  When he was 50, he bought a new truck and told everyone he was “two trucks from death”.  When questioned on that, he would say,”I am 50 years old, if I buy a truck every 10 years I will buy another when I am 60 and one more when I am 70.  Chances are, I will be dead when I am 80 so I am two trucks from death.  I come from a family that is “that kind” of pragmatic.  They approach life with humor, grace, realism, and incredible bluntness.  My brother currently has a job where he has use of a work truck to commute and he only puts about 1000 miles a year on his personal truck so it should last another 30 years.  He now calls it the “death truck”.  When you go to visit, he will say “don’t bother renting a car, you can just drive the death truck”.  Yeah…that is my family and they are amazing. I love them dearly.

Family vacation, circa 1966

My family has never been one on ceremony or flowery speaking. They understand life on an elemental level. Maybe it is because of the dramatic change of seasons in New England where they live, or maybe it is the harshness of the winters, I don’t know. I just know that they understand that there are seasons of our lives just like there are seasons in the world around us.  To demonstrate that, when we had a family reunion, they would say “look around you, there are three groups of people. There are the young kids swimming in the frigid cold lake, the 30- and 40-somethings playing horseshoes, and then all the old guys over there talking politics”.  When they themselves, in their 50s and 60s, started gravitating to the politics group, they acknowledged it and accepted it with that same bluntness and realism, knowing that they had reached another season of their lives.  One of the best things about them is you always know right where you stand with them. They have hearts of gold, but don’t ask them a question you don’t really want to know the answer to, because they will give it to you.

When I moved to Seattle I was 44.  My brother told me then, “Robin, you’ve got 30 more years.  In your seventies, you aren’t going to be learning how to kayak, ride a mountain bike, ski etc.  If there is something you want to learn how to do, you need to do it now. Otherwise, you will be like our mother who is in her seventies sitting around lamenting about all the things she wishes she had done in her life but now doesn’t have the capacity to do”.  My brother isn’t saying I can’t learn anything or have adventures after 70, he is reminding me to take advantage of every moment of my life so I won’t have regrets.  I remind myself of that often.

Ever since I started talking about teaching in Ethiopia, I have had wavering feelings about what I am doing. That is probably pretty normal with such a big undertaking.  And of course, with my type A personality, I think I have to do it perfectly. Which means that I beat myself up whenever I have a self-doubt.  I also have this crazy idea that I have to deal with it all on my own, without accepting any help from anyone else.  Needless to say, the past couple of weeks have been ones of ups and downs.  I have the feeling that will happen several more times before I am finally on the plane.

Saying goodbye to friends

The downs have happened when I have been overwhelmed by details of international visas, travel arrangements, all the unknown obstacles of long term international travel and work, dealing with my physical stuff here in the U.S. and dealing with the emotion behind leaving my friends and family that I love.  The ups have occurred when I tell people about what I am going to do and they say, “I have a friend who lives/lived in Addis, let me connect you” and I get these emails from people around the world who tell me how much I am going to love it.  They give me connections to great coffee shops, restaurants, and insights into things to do. And not just in the city, but things that will call to my adventurous side also. Places like the Simien Mountains, the Danakil depression, Gondar, the Blue Nile Falls, and Lake Tana and when I look at the pictures, I can’t help but be excited by the adventure. Those times I feel like I can totally do this.

Even more important, I have spent the first half of my life figuring out what my values are, what I believe in, and what I am willing to risk taking a stand for.  This is an opportunity for me to be able to make a difference and it is an opportunity that not many people get. I understand how fortunate I am.  Now it is time to put those values and beliefs into action…to put my time and effort into being the change I want to see in the world.

Some people can affect change in the world by what they say so eloquently. I have always envied those people who can articulate themselves so perfectly. I am not one of them.  I, like my brothers, am too blunt and pragmatic.  But what I lack in communication skills, I make up for in action, I figure out ways to make things happen.  But in order to do that, first I have to jump, net or no net…because I only have 30 more years.