Wednesday, December 25, 2013

How I make my decisions.

Sitting in a business class lounge with 30 mins before boarding a flight leaving Australia for Thailand and Pakistan, going to make a bit of a cathartic post because if I don't now I won't later.

Business class was a simple error of changing plans, waiting to long and having to use miles to book a ticket, but at the moment I'm enjoying my mistake.

Why Australia? Well a year ago a paragliding friend I met in Thailand asked me to be his supporter for the Red Bull X-Alps 2013, I didn't feel qualified but I agreed, and was flattered he would ask me. Health problems made him withdraw and then things got worse. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, by the summer it had spread to his bones. He took on an alternative diet program and following his posts on FB I could see his attitude was positive and full of hope, but I could also see he was struggling to maintain the program and balance all the daily chores of life. Often he would overexert himself and have a setback. I knew I had the time and could go and spend some time with him, help him maintain his program and improve his health.

But as always I had several options and the more appealing one was going to meet a woman I was in interested in. She was beautiful, independent, loved to travel and even spoke some hindi. Recently she'd gotten in bicycle touring. As I was finishing my work season on my Uncles farm in Minnesota she was doing a short bicycle tour in the desert of Australia, we planned to meet after in Taiwan and then travel together in India. I was shocked when I found out via FB that she had died in a road accident. It was hard to process too as we didn't have many mutual friends.. it all felt a bit unreal.

At that point it was easy to make the commitment to visit Lloyd, my paragliding friend living in Australia.

As I leave today it's been 40 days that I've been a full time carer for my friend and the first time I've done something like this. It's been incredibly rewarding. To really dedicate yourself to serving another person and to have such a visible impact on protecting them from unnecessary suffering and improve their quality of life. I think it's something I'm good at and will be open to future opportunities to act in this role.  It kind of balances my normal life where I just serve my own interests and desires. In the end what I've gotten out of it in terms of increasing my ability to feel compassion, work on patience and acceptance and develop my heart outweighs the stress I took on.

What I've learned from Lloyd is just to put yourself out there, post something and be honest rather than try to edit it, clean it up and think about how it will be received.

Great idea Lloyd Pennicuik had to get autographs for his Red Bull Xalps shirt and auction it off. So far it's got 2 signatures, when I see David Hanning I'll get his and then we'll send it on to Honza and Max Fanderl in north america and then on to Europe.. It'll be fun to see how many Athletes and supporters we can get to sign it!


8 comments:

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Unknown said...

So you have a very hard and unique experience in your journey.i read all about your writings and you have shared your all experiences.many ups and downs in different people's life and i am sure it didn't effect you in negative way and you are lways in positive direction
@Manjeet kumar
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Thank you so much for sharing such a nice post. I also would like to travel places like Swat Valley, Shogran, Naran Kaghan, Quetta Ziarat and many other places but in order to do so, i must know about tour packages in Pakistan.

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