The beautiful things that happen when you just go for it

What I can tell you 14 years after I got on that plane

29 year old me in the middle of one great adventure and at the beginning of another

Hello, I’m back from a little break for a family holiday with a post about taking chances. I’ve included a voice recording in case you’re out enjoying the sunshine 🤞on a beautiful walk and want to take my dulcet New Zealand tones with you. But also because this weeks piece is about being a New Zealand born Londoner and I feel that it’s best expressed with my accent in tow.

Lately I’ve been thinking about taking big chances, those leaps of faith. As I continue walking this new path, not exactly sure where it will lead, I remember the last time I did that and all that it led to. It’s been 14 years since I circled the patchwork fields on descent to Heathrow airport for the first time. The 20 hour flight from Sydney behind me and an adventure somewhere new ahead. Now that so much time has passed, I tend to forget that I’m other, not from here, different. Because for those 14 years London has been my home.

I arrived in the UK on the 5^th April 2009, no real plan but to travel Europe for a few months with friends, find a job and a place to call home. In my 29 years I’d never been outside New Zealand or Australia, I had no idea how things worked on the other side of the world, but I did it anyway.

Because I got on that plane, I travelled to all the places I’d only seen in TV or read about in books. I ate pinxos in San Sebastián, I cooked fresh pasta in Florence and sat watching the sunset on the shores of an island in Croatia.

It was real adventure, real experience and only the second time I’d left a job with nothing to go to. Something that has never frightened me, only excited me with the possibility of it all. New experiences, places and people everyday. Nothing to live in but the moment. It was beautiful.

After travelling, returning to the UK in a recession made the task of finding a job difficult. But the summer was good and the London parks in full bloom of beauty so the time was not passed with difficulty. And as I was down to my last dollars the job offer came, then the tiny flat in Barons Court, west London. It had fallen into place just when it needed to. I had made a home and a life thousands of miles away.

Since then life has placed many other adventures in my path. I’ve stood on the balcony of the royal enclosure at Royal Ascot, I’ve sat centre court at Wimbledon and had tea in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. I’ve met my husband, bought a house and added a beautiful dog to our family. None of which would have happened if I hadn’t got on that plane 14 years ago.

Sometimes you have to start without quite knowing how it will end up. But if you keep going, with your eyes tuned to look for opportunities a beautiful adventure will open up. Each time I find my mind wandering towards worry about how it will all turn out, I remind myself of the beautiful life that unfolded because I got on that plane.

I’m curious, have you leaped into the unknown and taken a chance on something? What amazing things happened because you took that chance?