I was sat cross-legged on the cold marble window seat at Rich View Terrace with my nose pressed against the thin, cold pane of glass – the only thing stopping me from tumbling down twenty-seven stories to the lego-sized life below.
I was looking out onto a city that just less than twelve months ago I was about to call home.
I was wearing his burgundy pyjamas, sipping the best coffee in the world from a blue and white porcelain mug, listening to some Pink Martini and shaking my head out loud. Every atom within me was dancing as I tried to work out where reverie ended and reality began.
The macaroon-coloured towers all around me were soaring up from the ground to touch the skies. The sun was rising somewhere behind the mist and fog that gathered around Victoria Peak and the city lights twinkled out a glittering wake up call below.
There were no fast foot commuters, no beeping horns and no birdsong, just the occasional red taxi driving along Hollywood Road with it’s light on. The charcoal streets were eerily silent.
I stared down at the ancient Man Mo temple and wondered what this place looked like before the high rise, high life took over. I was holding my breath, skipping through the opium fumes as my thoughts raced through two hundred years of history.
Then, just as Pink Martini’s rendition of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien came on the stereo, I noticed it there amongst the concrete foliage, just outside the temple -a vibrant, candyfloss coloured Sakura blossom tree. And I smiled.
I was always supposed to end up here.
The White Rabbit
Don’t they say that all roads lead to the same destination? And don’t they also say that the journey is the destination?
I guess that’s why I was stood there shaking my head out loud. My eyes were wide with utter disbelief and yet sparkling with total conviction that Fate had led me here to this moment.
There was a time when the Dreamer within me was silenced and her wide-eyed views of the world were hushed. Her rose-tinted glasses were snatched away and her aspirations tiptoed off into the shadows.
She spent a few years at the School of Life, learning all of the harsh lessons on the curriculum and when she finally graduated, her Dreamer reappeared.
And together we could have spun our hamster wheel over to Hong Kong. We could have lived the big city life with plenty of adventure and it could have been good. But that’s just not what destiny handed over.
Instead I got a blank canvas to paint out a new chapter and my paintbrush took me down all sorts of roads, within and without.
I was Alice chasing my very own white rabbit on a quest for truth. I was curiouser and curiouser and always grinning like a Cheshire cat. I attended all sorts of tea parties and met all sorts of Mad Hatters. I drank the potions, I ate the cake and I found the key to all of the doors.
And it’s no use going back to yesterday, for I was a different person then.
The Mad Hatter
The best thing about being a Dreamer is that you don’t have to be asleep to make magic things happen. It gives you this Peter Pan, child-like wonder and you know that, actually, Nothing Is Impossible.
You can have exactly the life that you want, the world can be your playground and you can rebel against societal rules. You can dismiss the pressure to settle down, pair up, get married, have kids and buy a house ~ especially with the wrong person.
You can work on your own clock, from wherever you choose to work and with whomever you choose to work with. You can wake up every morning excited to check your emails, flex your brain muscles and see what the day has in store.
Your ambition can be knowledge-seeking and your success can be happiness-driven, and although monetary gains should really only ever a by product, you can be lining your own pockets not somebody else’s.
You can love what you do. You can squeeze the most out of every minute of the day, making time for family, for friends and for you. You can design your life exactly how you want it to be and you can love it more than life itself.
You can be the Queen of Hearts in a Wonderland of your own.
The Queen Of Hearts
I remember that day so clearly, the day that life gave me lemons, and how ever since I pressed the pause button I had this overpowering urge to seek.
I was in search of something, a purpose or a deeper meaning or something, anything more than what I already knew. I wanted to feel truth, feel love and feel happiness like never before. And I wanted to know what really made me want to get up out of bed every morning.
I’ve tested out the extremes of monkhood, yoga tribes and travel, I’ve been little miss socialite and I’ve been a massive workaholic. And although I’ve struggled with balancing out my yins and my yangs, I’ve found what I was looking for.
Now not only do I know exactly what I want more clearly than I ever have, but I have it in my grasp.
And while it saddens me to say that my beloved blogging is now being reserved for just a weekly Super Sunday treat, I’m ecstatic knowing that Mindless Mag and Consciously Curated are starting to take off.
This is where the Heart-Centered meets the Hustle.