Keep it simple – reflections from the Flying Kiwi

Having reached the age where my generation has been "side-parked", we now have the time to reflect a little on life. It has slowly dawned on me that the most traumatic problems experienced in life are often man-made. A life spent in the outdoors, however, offers an antidote to these stresses caused by everyday life in the city. Always keen on life in the open, hairy situations on tramping or skiing trips in the New Zealand and European Alps, come to mind.

– the wet night on a New Zealand scree slope - sleeping on platforms dug out for our sleepingbags. My group had been caught by nightfall on a weekend tramping trip in the North Island, while sliding down a steep scree slope. The sudden darkness made it too dangerous to go on. Despite the precarious conditions and the wet night - waking up to sodden sleepingbags, a sleepless night and a skimpy breakfast of Mars bars, we still survived – we were still alive – no one had caught exposure or fallen down the slope during the night.

- other similar experiences in the outdoors such as being caught by rivers in flood, having an emergency snow-caving experience on a stormy Ruapehu, falling in a crevasse in the French Alps, negotiating tricky passages on steep, icy, airy slopes while ski-mountaineering with fully laden packs in Europe – or simply getting left behind and lost in a white wilderness...

- however stressful these experiences were at the time, they were exhilarating – adrenaline- raising and never left any lasting trauma.

Problems encountered in a man-made urban environment, however, are different and can permanently scar a person – physically or psychologically.

- difficult relations with colleagues in a working environment,

- having no work at all and therefore no income and/or prospect of a normal future - marrying, buying a home and raising children,

- having to face pollution directly caused by an urban lifestyle and density of population - a way of life dictated by powerful materialistic forces in a society motivated by greed and a race to make money.

The ordinary, small person – the “man in the street” - has no power to fight these “man-made” challenges and is forced to “go with the flow” for survival. The answer however lies in a change in one's attitude and way of life and this is entirely up to the individual. There is no need to be drowned by these petty so-called “problems” created by mankind in an urban society.

The real problems in the world are environmental. Getting back to nature is a way of getting a better perspective on life. With “nature”, you take your destiny in your own hands and your chances of survival are entirely up to you. A struggle for survival in nature – with a real problem – is the clue to how a person should live.

People should not be overwhelmed by urban living and petty “virtual” man-made problems caused by human meanness. The real problems are out there in the natural world.

Perhaps one day, mankind will rediscover the real purpose of life? One can only dream.....As the farmers say, “the answer lies in the soil” - or is this a quote from the “Archers” in the dim, distant past of a childhood spent “Down Under”....

Flying Kiwi

September 2014