Ivan Ilych
Reading Ivan Ilych made me question my idea of what a meaningful life is and my plans for my future. What does it mean to live well? What do I value in life? What is it that sustains, excites and gratifies me? My family is very important to me, they all live away from Rohin and I so a lot of the focus is trying to maintain a sense of closeness and making time to talk to and see each other. This is often difficult, life gets busy and sometimes the last thing you feel like doing by 8pm at night is making a lengthy phone call. But you have too, and you always feel better, more connected after making or even taking that call. It can be tough to be away from my family, I miss them all but it’s being away from my mum that is the hardest. It not alaways easy for Rohin and I to make plans for the future, we don’t know where we will be sent every few years or even if Rohin will be in the country. Part of the attraction of becoming a teacher is the school holidays which will give me the opportunity to see even just our close family which is spread from Townsville in the north to Bagara, Toowoomba, Hervey Bay, Taree, Newcastle and Melbourne in the south. That is one of the downsides of living away from family and wanting to be with them, you never actually go on a real holiday, your always visiting.
Since getting married though, Rohin and I have built this sense of family between us and now
‘little Arkie’ is also a part of that. This is our network of strength and support where there is fun and understanding and unconditional love (when the dishes get done anyway).To ensure a relationship's survival I think you both need to share developments of your way of thinking and new experiences with each other. Part of this is also compromising. Rohin and my values and plans and concepts of the way we should live our lives are not exactly the same, but we compromise, respect each others views and would never try to stop the other from doing something that they felt very strongly about. So part of making the right choices in life is making the right choice of partner, one that will encourage and respect the rest of the important choices you make. Yet usually you die alone and certainly regret alone.
Ivan Ilych led to a Sunday afternoon “we should make a vision map” experience that ended in tears and a few harsh words about Rohin’s lack of creativity and my ‘apparent’ emotional instability (very uncalled for, I thought). This could have made me question the above choice but the swift apologies and kisses and calm talking and planning that followed further proves my hunch that I have made the right choice.
This is my 91 year old great-grandmother Mardy and her 'boyfriend' of 15yrs Cecil in February when Rohin, Arkie and I went up to Taree to stay with them for the weekend. Isn't love grand!
