Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep
Yeah nah, I’m sweet as bro. We’ll take the chilly bin down to the beach in our flip flops and have some fush and chups watching the sunset. Chur mate.
One. Two. Six (said in a New Zealand accent of course :P). Eighteen. Thirty Five. One Hundred and Forty Three. Two Thousand Three Hundred and Sixty Nine. No, I’m not an insomniac counting sheep as I try and get to sleep, but I was counting sheep and plenty of them as I drove through spanning mountain ranges on my recent trip to New Zealand.
Let us rewind to just over month ago when my friend Mikki and I touched down in the Land of the Sheep only to be greeted by my friend Jackson holding a sign welcoming Mikki while simultaneously (with some profanity) telling me where I could go (maaaaate). Here begins the next three weeks of planned (and often unplanned) adventures, banter, delicious food, magnificent views, posed (and generally shirtless — on Jackson’s part anyway) photos and unscripted hilarious videos… I really should consider making holiday blooper reals a thing.
The next few weeks consisted of dying while hiking, crying while mountain biking (and simultaneously breaking my va-jay-jay — not really… but how can one body part hurt so much?!), squealing while jet boating and limping in fashionably questionable Crocs. Too many renditions of “[Don’t Go Chasing] Waterfalls”, throwing up enough shakas that I nearly convinced myself I was Kelly Slater and impressively yet uncoordinatedly stacking it or injuring myself on a daily basis as I pretended that my previous definition of ‘adventuring’ wasn’t just visiting mountain ranges… on google maps… from my couch… with a bowl of popcorn in front of me.
You’re probably thinking… jeez girl, you spent a lot of money to have what otherwise sounds like a s**t trip. Well you’d be right, going to New Zealand was basically a charity case to give lonely Jackson a friend or two for a few weeks… haha nah I joke, I joke (or do I). The breathlessness, the near death experiences and the literal pain, sweat and tears combined to produce one of, if not the best holiday I have ever experienced, filled with countless waterfalls, secluded secret New Zealand spots and breathtaking (and oh so photogenic) views that I will never forget. Not to mention meeting and making friends with so many new people… as well as one or three cows and sheep.
But mj, you said not to count sheep but to count your blessings… you can’t finish this blog just yet! You’re right, there is a large significant part of this trip that can’t be overlooked and counting my blessings is just the beginning.
“Are you ok?” “Please reply, let me know you’re safe!” “Check the news, where are you?”… my phone was buzzing off the hook, but it wasn’t until I turned the TV on and saw the eruption on White Island that everything started making sense. 47 people were on the island when it erupted, 24 of whom were Australian. As of today, 17 (16 of whom were Australian) have died with 2 on the island still unaccounted for (presumed dead), with the potential of more deaths of those who are currently critically injured in the hospitals.
Only a week earlier I was in Whakatane! What stopped us doing that trip? Our entire holiday was an active one, full of hikes… what stopped us from doing this one?
We were in the Bay of Plenty at the time of the eruption. Had it been an eruption as well as an earthquake we would have been hit by a tsunami. Then the day I was flying out of New Zealand I had the choice of flying out of Auckland or Gisborne, I chose Auckland, this same day… Gisborne was hit by a magnitude 5 earthquake.
Every new death that I see on the TV hits a chord in me, knowing that it could have very easily been me. Somebody was looking out for me in New Zealand, but the reality is that every single day, regardless of the precautionary paths we take to minimise the risk of something happening to us, we cannot control everything. A drunk driver, a heart attack or stroke, being bitten by a shark or venomous spider, electrocuted by a live wire or a rare lightning strike… A workplace accident, a wall that decided to give way or even a terror attack. And yet each and every day, we forget just how lucky we are to be alive, taking the smallest things like the air we breathe and water we drink for granted.
At any point it could all be taken away from us and it is time to realise this, it is time to count our blessings. Time to stop letting the little insignificant s**t get to us and time to make the most of this extraordinary opportunity we have been given. LIFE!
As Maya Angelou once said “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away”… Whatever form that may take.
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who has been effected by the volcano.
