My grandpa volunteered to leave home (Australia) to fight the Japanese empire in a foreign land, thousands of kilometers from home. My young grandma was pregnant at the time with my dad.
My great grandma on my Mom’s side left Southern China on a wooden vessel, heading south into the unknown, the only certainty she had was that she would never see home again.
Choices were made at significant personal cost. What propelled them? What was the value they saw in stepping into the abyss?
I sit here sipping on an organic dry red, candlelight licking at the brushed aluminium corners of my Apple laptop. I have Australian sheepskin shoes on my feet, and am gazing at wooden christmas toys hand carved in the Saxon Mountain ranges of Germany. I have never wanted for anything.
The number of layers of protection I am cocooned in thanks to my friends, my family and the state make it impossible for me to understand what my forbears felt as they pushed off from the shore.
As we trudge to work shoulders hunched, wishing the work day was behind us rather than still to come, I have to wonder why we are unable to make our own leaps of faith towards carving out a different existence.
Nutter Projects 