I grew up in the Salvation Army. For me it was like growing up in a little village. The people there knew nothing about life outside of the village. I was known there and felt at home there. There are many good people in that village and I often think of the people I knew there.
When I became a man, I realised I could not believe in good faith. So I had the choice of staying and pretending to believe, or leaving and losing all the friends and family I had grown up with.
I often wonder if I had met a good woman in my little village, maybe I would be still there, playing in the brass band, comforted by my good wife, content and happy.
I miss it a lot, that sense of belonging. Some nights I even listen to brass band music. Now isn't that an appalling admission *laughs*
In my opinion it's better to be unhappy and lonely and miserable, than to deceive yourself and others, by pretending to be a Christian, when that's not what you honestly believe.
I continue to try and act in that way.
I have told my woman I would much prefer her to be happy without me, than unhappy with me. If she thinks she couldn't be happy living here, then I would understand.
I have managed people for twenty years. I have studied some psychology and marketing and advertising. I am good at what I do.
It is not a difficult thing to manipulate people, to make them do what you wish.
There are certain buttons you can push to make people do as you please. I am thinking about people's desire to belong, to think well of themselves, to be accepted, things like that.
To use this knowledge to get what you wish for is simply disgraceful.
I am not saying this to show off. I am just saying that this is another example of a situation in which doing the right thing is not necessarily brings you any happiness.
I think that is what love really is, when you care about the happiness of someone else, more than you care about your own happiness.
Life is full of hard choices.
When you do the right thing, it doesn't necessarily make you any happier. Mostly it does. But sometimes it doesn't.
I am feeling what so many others feel, month after month: the sadness of being so far away from the one I love, the sadness of longing for someone who might decide in the end to go her own way. Ah well, whatever will be, will be.
I really am glad to have met the people I have met here. It's kind of sad we're dispersed, but one day perhaps, I will catch up with the Aussies and some of my favourites.
Take care, one and all.
