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Finding purpose amongst plastic

Sep 22, 2024

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I’m back from my holiday in Vietnam. I’ve hiked and swam and laid down and ate. I’ve experienced a different culture, and reflected on my own at home, like how being Australian is to be comfortable walking barefoot in public, much to the horror of everyone else. 

“You love self help books.” Tom quizzically points out as he peers over his verbose high fantasy tomes. 

I assume my therapist will have something to say about the fact my sunlounger reads have been self development books with actionable steps to improve my life situation. I did try to rest my mind, at first, by reading a fiction novel. That book was the Alchemist by Paulo Ceolho. It’s technically a self help book. But honestly, what book isn’t? Isn’t that what stories are for?


My new favourite photo, taken by me in a Buddhist temple in Hoi An

Before I left Melbourne, I had been grappling with an ongoing conflict between my Ego and my Self. My life situation was no longer reflecting my internal landscape. I have been experiencing growing pains of many kinds. I have been frantically preempting to jump ship even though the life raft hasn’t inflated yet. But I lunge and pull back, lunge and pull back every time, terrified of landing in the water. 

At the end of my trip, I’m asking myself: what’s wrong with the water?


I’ve got a life jacket on. The sun is shining. There’s land in the distance. What am I so afraid of?

I am, and I can safely say all of you are, constantly knocking up against the pressure and expectations of a generation who smoked on airplanes. A generation of people who thrived in prosperity, buying houses for one hundred thousand dollars but called psychologists “shrinks.” 

They are threshold guardians and symbols of conformity. We will struggle against them for the rest of their lives, as many of them represent the traditional ideas of the world, that in-the-box thinking, until we take their place. 


To choose something different requires vulnerability. From when they came, that is the most feared choice you can make.


They try to convince you it’s stupid and naive, when it is actually the most courageous. 

If my unenthusiastic presence on LinkedIn has taught me anything, we are aware now more than ever of the importance of work-life balance. We can take this hybrid model we’ve developed and apply it to everything. We can nibble on our life choices like tapas, rather than committing to one meal. (Millennials do love tapas.) You don’t have to choose one career, one job, one life path. Your personal or working life doesn’t have to end if you have children. You don’t have to refer to your wife as your ball and chain. (You really don’t.) 

An inspired life full of joy, even until you’re elderly and beyond that, is actually possible. Better yet, you deserve that. Even right now. Yes, right now.

Vietnamese people love little plastic stools. Every morning, old people take them out onto the street and perch upon them, talking to their friends. Even until they are like, really fucking old. It makes me sad to think of the lonely elderly members of our society, gradually becoming more isolated within their homes. It doesn’t have to be this way.


The plastic stools: apparently, they used to have them to clear out quicky if the police came since they aren’t allowed to operate on the sidewalk. Now, it’s just the vibe. Photo taken by me.


Blue Zones are regions in the world where the people are said to have exceptionally long lives due to physical activity, low stress, a local whole foods diet and a deep connection to the people around them. There’s a village in Japan where many of the oyster shucker people are over the age of 90. They keep getting up every morning because they have to shuck their oysters.

Early in our trip, I recounted a time in early high school to Tom, a moment that has had a lasting impact on me. It was when my private girls school was visited by Buddhist Monks. They spent the entire day creating a beautiful and intricate mandala from coloured sand, only to blow it all away by the time the bell rang. I could not believe it. They didn’t even let us take photos of it. Coming from my Western-patricharchal-capitalist worldview, it was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. 


Rice field workers in Lao Chai, taken by me


In pursuit of my life raft, I had become obsessed with the oneness of everything. One choice, one turning point, one path. I had glorified the usual way of doing things over curiously experimenting with a lifestyle that intellectually stimulates and challenges me. I knew I was choosing lower vibrations but I ignored the feeling to dwell in the safety of being a potato person. I convinced myself I needed a tightly constructed plan to prevent the unavoidable nitpicking of naysayers. I pressured myself to choose, desperate to find my life’s purpose. 

What if my life’s purpose is pottering about, minding my own business, and causing minimal harm? What if my life’s purpose is to bring peace to myself and others as best as I can on this day?

My purpose doesn’t have to be heavy, or hard, or take a lot of time to build. It can simple and ordinary and gently whisked away by a warm breeze. 

Sep 22, 2024

4 min read

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Planet Persephone acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

Wurundjeri Land

Melbourne, Australia

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