Wenx’ World: Feeling the love?

Me te aroha nui” is a phrase I learned this week. It’s Maori and means ‘with much love’. And all the messages, email, texts and parcels I got this week were indeed ‘me te aroha nui’.

I was about to ignore my birthday. I had just gotten back the night before from an extremely active trip in Far North Queensland. Flight delayed, body exhausted, bags unpacked. Happy birthday to me. Is there any way we can take a rain check for birthdays? As it turned out, ignoring it was no option: I was slammed with birthday messages for more than 48 hours (Thanks, time zones and confused friends!). Lovely, personal messages, emails, texts, parcels. It was great. I loved every bit of it. I could feel the love.

My birthday day was slammed with teaching from early morning into the dark, I love teaching but, let’s say, things didn’t come together at the beginning. I was stuck in between lecturer and students, it was chaos, entropy rising, I was winging the lessons the best I could. My mind was far from birthday celebrations. In fact, all I wanted after the packed travelling days and crazy teaching marathon was to go home and sleep. Nevertheless, great friends fit in two very special moments. I got a self-baked birthday cake! We somehow managed to squeeze it in between all our teaching (and not necessarily cake hour but it was sunny and beautiful!) Lucky me.

After teaching, I finally got to go home. I was exhausted, I didn’t have the stamina to respond to any messages, texts, emails. I opened up a mini bottle of bubbles, which I magically found hiding in my fridge and started unpacking mum’s parcel. I smiled. And as the bottle ran dry, I wondered: Despite my feeling of happiness at this birthday evening, I was sitting in my living room, all by myself. The empty bottle of alcohol somehow rounded the picture off. All the beautiful digital words and here I was alone in the dark. What had social media done to me?

Not much later, my housemate came home and played a happy birthday ukulele solo for me.

So lucky.

See you out there – Wenx