C'est la vie.

Such is life. No more, no less. Such is life. Why then, are these words considered so negative? Never are they used to describe happy events. And yet, in an of themselves, they are very neutral. So why do we not say, "Today I relaxed on the beach with my toes in the sand. Ah, c'est la vie!"? I think we should. Change the drudgery of our daily expressions to be just that bit more positive.

This goes for a lot of things - and it's also advice I myself need to take more. In and of themselves, words, people, objects and feelings are neither negative nor positive - it is simply the projection of our own bias we use to make them so. I vividly recall "horrible" events in my life that I woed over for many days before they magically seemed to turn into great wonderful things.

Take my meeting my fiance, for a small example. I met him because my motorbike decided it was not going to turn off. Ever. The ignition had broken and I was devastated. I had only had the bike for a few months! I got a couple offers from some dirty old man to fix it, but declined out of some sort of fear he might hurt me. When I continued to look for a new ignition I was met with much resistance. Bike shops had closed down for good. Parts were hard to source. Excuses were made.

Finally the dirty old man said to me, "I have the part right here if you're willing to come and get it." I so was not. I was scared, I admit, that he might use this way 'in' as an attempt to sleep with me. I was right, I suppose. Turns out the dirty old man was actually rather young, but still dirty (not minded! just dirty! covered in it!). He fixed the part for me, somehow convinced me to see him and again and my horrible messed up motorbike turned into me begrudgingly meeting some man I didn't want to meet - only to be marrying him in near one hundred days now.

Obviously the 'bad' in this example is not very bad, but I make a small point still. I have had much worse things happen in my life that have also turned good (one of these days I'll tell you how I ended up in Australia) but at the time, I didn't think they were good at all. Ranging from the time I was homeless to my husband leaving me for a teenage girl - those horrible things would not have put me in the place I am now.

So, I'd like to make a small suggestion. Not to you, not to me, just to the anyone who wants to think about it or consider for a moment their own lives. All those moments you sighed longingly and said to yourself, "C'est la vie," in frustration at something plaguing your life - that it didn't end up so bad after all. Even the worst things in life have meaning - this I know from the bottom of my heart. So perhaps we need to change not the definition but the feeling behind the words we say.

C'est la vie. Such is life. And it can be great.

Reminiscing

This is a good photo with a nice story. My girlfriend and I were in Gove, NT working as waitresses. You can sort of see the pool next to the hotel I was working at. Those houses are about all there is of Gove and that's about it for a good long while.

During the night one night, a helicopter came down to work on some Telstra lines in the area. Apparently, Gove is so far away from anything, they helicopter in tech support. Ha!

We had worked about 12 hours and it was extremely late when my girlfriend decided she was going to at that very moment find the pilots and get us a first thing in the morning ride in the 'copter. Luckily for us they had been in the bar and we hadn't realized it (they really didn't look like pilots) and they stumbled back drunkenly to the helicopter.

"You're not gonna fly in that condition!" I yelled.
"Nah, mate. Just checkin' to make sure she's still here." He patted the machine.

That's when my girl swooped in with her charm and grace and begged the men to take us up in the 'copter first thing in the morning.

"Only if you get us some rum." he said. Rum was hard to get after the bar closed. It's illegal for liquor to be sold after a certain time. It's also illegal to get beer unless you return an equal number of bottles. Some really weird liquor laws up there. Anyway, we had no way of getting rum! So my girlfriend begged and promised the next day they'd get a rum for free at the bar.

I don't really recall what happened, but I don't recall them ever getting rum and I recall us going to bed with the knowledge that, at 7am, we were going up in a helicopter to see the beaches of the NT from the sky. We were there at 7. By 8, we thought they weren't gonna show. By 815, we had gotten in the 'copter and were starting out way up!

It was so beautiful from up there. You could see the little tiny shops all along the street (just one, really) and a pile of tents (no idea who for) next to the beach. It was warm and beautiful and the sun was shining and it was amazing. I think we only spent 10-15 minutes in the air, but it was a real wonderful start to the day. It was almost a shame work started at noon.

Sometimes I feel so blessed to know I got paid for doing something like this.

The next day, another waitress left and asked us if we wanted the last half of her bottle of rum.