There is no goodbye
Not everyone is happy with our decision to move to France and this affects us too. How do we deal with this? This aspect becomes an important part of our process, even if you can’t see it from the outside.
Looking back, we can see that, in addition to a great deal of motivation, it takes a lot of courage to take the step abroad after having lived in the same house for 25 years. We loved our house in Hapert. I had never imagined that a move could be such a tangible, physical uprooting! I had moved several times before, but now I could feel the impact of being rooted for a longer period of time and that an important phase of my life was coming to an end. Buddha teaches us that all pain and suffering comes from ‘attachment’. Attachment to things, people, status. Attachment is not wrong as such, but it should not lead your life. So moving from Hapert to Horst first was a good move to split the big step into two. When we said goodbye to Hapert, there were many tears, but also the inner knowledge that it was the right thing to do. Knowing that Horst would be an intermediate stop, our settling in was limited to our dear neighbours.
How often will we go camping in the near future? After careful consideration… we decided to sell the caravan. We were also attached to our snail house, so there were tears again. But we kept an eye on each other: are we still up for it? Yes, we are!
We will take our precious memories with us wherever we go. And saying goodbye to people? People are passers-by on our path of life, that’s how I see it: we meet to co-create together, and when that’s done, we each go our own way. One has a closer relationship with some than with others. As a family, you choose to engage with each other longer and deeper for specific reasons. Those reasons are not always obvious from the earthly perspective, but they are from the other dimension. This knowledge makes me see things differently. It puts my life, prosperity and adversity, into a different perspective: it becomes less heavy and I become aware of my own influence. I could talk about this for hours, but it is better to read a book or do a workshop on it yourself.
I say goodbye to people without saying goodbye: a connection always remains, even after death.
And then there are our parents and daughter in the Netherlands, who would have preferred to keep us close by. Pain and joy go hand in hand: what is mine, what is not? This is another topic that requires reflection and deepening. Ultimately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to completely put oneself in another person’s shoes and understand their choices: each person is unique, with their own learning goals in life. Hence my appeal to humanity, including to myself: do not judge.
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