I had only gone to watch it because everyone was talking
about it, but I really didn't know anything about it
other than it starred Julia Roberts as a woman who is unhappy with the way her
life is going so she goes to three countries Italy, India and Bali to eat a
lot, pray a lot, fall in love and most importantly find herself.
Whilst the scenery in the movie was nothing short of
breathtaking, and the emotion I felt for Liz as I watched her go through her
journey was very real, the concept of one needing to find themselves was
completely lost on me at the time.
Partly because I thought I was happy with my life, but mostly because I was so busy being a someone
I never intentionally set out to be. I was someone who was busy being swept along by a
powerful current in a life that I didn’t create, rather I just let happen by itself.
I didn't walk away from the theater that night with any life
changing realizations for myself.
At least, I didn't think so at the time.
Instead I remember going home inspired to add Bali to my
bucket list and craving a big plate of spaghetti with loads of Parmesan cheese.
What I didn't realize as I watched that movie was that a seed
was being planted in my mind. A seed that would lay dormant for years, as if it
were waiting for the right combination of clarity, stillness and acceptance to
feed it and allow it to take root and grow into something.
Without knowing that seed existed, I never ever in a million years could have envisioned that one day in the future I
would be in Bali on my own journey of self discovery.
At 12.01 am on the morning of my 40th birthday in a villa in Seminyak Bali, that little seed grew its first bud.
I had purposely
waited up that night, alone, whilst my family slept.
I wanted to watch the
clock tick over midnight and herald the dawning of my 40th birthday, a day I
have anticipated and feared for quite some time.
I’m not sure what I was expecting would happen at 12.01am.
Would I feel different in some way?
Would there be a precise moment that an epiphany would come to me
through some sort of sign from the universe?
Being the melodramatic drama queen
that I am, I suppose I kind of expected that the sky would light up with a big
electrical storm, complete with rain pelting down and lightening strikes to provide me with enough
light to watch as my skin tightens and turns to stone before cracking
and falling away to reveal a weathered old woman beneath.
I told you I can be melodramatic.
What did happen was …
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
The sky remained calm and the thick muggy air remained quiet
and perfectly still.
My skin did not suddenly age, nor did my mind and I absolutely did NOT feel
any different to how I felt only moments earlier.
With almost a degree of disappointment and exhaustion from
the unsatiated anticipation I flicked off
the light.
I closed my eyes and slept my first sleep as a forty year old woman,
unaware of a little seed awakening and the long awaited epiphany that would greet
me come morning.
