Communities and the damage control

My first school wasn’t much of a community. Or if it was, I didn’t fit in there. I had 4 friends in that school and I only have close contact with one of them today.

So, I went to the interviews of the first and only private school at the time in this sweet hometown of mine and apparently demonstrated some early skill and got accepted. It cost about 5 to 6 euros a month for my single, working mother and it was not a small penny in the beginning of 90s in a small town.

This became my first community. The teachers, the activities, the friends, the parties. I also joined the boy scouts which allowed me to expand my network covering my entire home country and reaching to Sweden. I wrote letters (yes with paper and pen and envelops and stamps and all) to some girls I had met and stood in the phonebooth to call the guys. I had workout buddies from the track and field and different ones from the karate group. I was 15 years old.

Then I changed school again. To a different place. A boarding school in the middle of nowhere, 40 km to a closest town. And I started again. After a while I had new contacts and new friends and groups reaching to the big city, much bigger than my hometown was.

The I joined the Navy and got my first kid. And I started again. Being a soldier is a bit like a forced brotherhood. Did you know that most of the soldiers fight on the battlefield to protect their brothers by their side and not for any other “greater goal” ? It was an interesting time with interesting people. I even stayed a bit longer and graduated a Swedish Defence Academy in 2007 as a naval officer. By then I had expanded my community all around the world. I knew people in almost any country of Europe, Scandinavia, United States and Asia.

Then I decided to leave the armed forces to get in touch with the rest of the society. I got introduced to a gentlemen’s club called Round Table, which brought me back to a setting of voluntary brotherhood. And then I moved to Norway and started again… As I still was a member of Round Table, I quickly established my first community helping me to enter the rest of the local society painlessly. After 5 years, I have friends and contacts all over the beautiful and wild country of Norway. Men and women in different ages, working in various areas of life, athletes and musicians.

And then, I didn’t move, but my life situation still changed. I got anchored in a wheelchair in the matter of moments. And I was starting again…

But I didn’t. I took the damage control first. I am still an active member of Round Table, which today is my biggest community and network, so it’s good. I am still in contact with almost everybody from my life before. And I suddenly know a bunch of new people and their stories, whom I probably never would have met in other circumstances. I don’t need to start again after all, this time.

Only when you somehow run a shore or become anchored in your life, unable to just walk away or to move on by free will, you realise what you have around you and what you have lost a long time ago. I miss my old friends and my old groups from the earlier days, but I also appreciate more, the ones I have today.

So, cast the anchor in safe waters in a beautiful bay and stop for a second, before the life stops you. Do the damage control – think sweet about your losses and love and keep what you still have in your hands today. 

You can support my walking project here!