The Best Piece of Advice I Was Ever Given
And it took me twenty years before I listened to it
“Wherever you go there you are” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
This is a very well-known quote, and it perfectly sums up the best advice I was ever given.
Only it wasn’t from Jon Kabat Zin that I first heard it.
It was from my mum and she wasn’t exactly talking to me either.
She was talking to my dad.
He wanted to move, again. He had some issues settling down (the understatement of the century) and was always looking for the next best thing. The grass was always greener elsewhere.
As they were discussing this, mum told him, “You can run away as far as you want, but you will always take yourself along for the journey.”
For years I didn’t listen to this advice. After all, it wasn’t directed at me.
In fact I ran away so far, if I would have gone any further I would be coming back. I moved all the way to New Zealand; it’s literally not possible to be further away from Belgium.
To be fair, when we moved to New Zealand, it wasn’t because we were ‘running away’. We were looking for a different lifestyle, a little less fast-paced than Belgium's.
