God’s waiting room doesn’t just have accessible – but private beaches with turquoise coloured water where you might see the occasional walker, smiling – content within the moment. It also has a nightlife for those in the mood and in the acceptable age-range. It has a largely acceptable drinking culture, if you want a beer or 10, you’ll find a theme that suits your taste. Wineries? Hundreds. Shopping…sure. Large homes with gardens? Yep, take your pick.
I’m talking about Perth, a city in Australia in the West. It was cool living there, and most days I do miss it. But I left it because started to feel like I was in God’s waiting room waiting to die. You often hear people talking about towns where nothing ever happens. Perth felt like that for me. For all it’s beauty, for all the great friends I have there and the lifestyle which I doubt I’ll find anywhere else.
But it just isn’t enough sometimes. I couldn’t live my life in my perfect home,, with my perfect partner and my perfect job and my perfect motorbike waiting to die. In fact, I got hit by a car on my motorbike one day and I did nearly die. And it was then that I realised that I couldn’t sit around in God’s waiting room waiting to die. I needed to live my life while I was still young enough to live it.
The grass isn’t always greener. I’m currently living between London and Milan and I’m pumped. I have a lifestyle that’s much more my pace; I meet people every day with my work and my writing. London is an exciting city with never a dull moment and Milan, well, it is nowhere near as exciting but it is close to the Swiss mountains and a train ride away from some of my favourite places in Italy and abroad.
People who have found their home, or have one but maybe they’re not entirely 100% certain that it is where they want to rest but often don’t have the resources, personality or the ability to move and try other places.
I suspect, that a friend of mine is right, as he repeatedly told me, “they always come back”, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll return to God’s waiting room and be happy and content to re-adjust to paradise and all of it’s treasures as I wait for my turn to die. But until that happens, I’m going to continue to run around the world like a screaming madman, writing up a storm and pushing life to its limits.