“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” ― Voltaire

Before we came to Spain, We were constantly being questioned about what it would be like living in Spain. To which we would usually respond with a smile and just say "we have no idea"

Nearly all other questions usually began with.............

                                       

• What if you get sick
• What if you do not like it
• What if.........

Seneca  A roman philosopher said

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult

Risk averse, is the society that we now live where spontaneity is rarely available to us, health and safety, work, responsibilities, debts and much more can hold us back from determining our own future sometimes we need to give up the certainties to be able to embrace change.  We were the same, I was the same, the type of person who loved to write lists, everything in its place, no room for failure. I wanted guaranteed results, the sort of person who wanted to know the ending of a film, to make sure I was not disappointed.
My husband would say something and my immediate reaction would be yes but what if........ and then one day it occurred to us, well me really, what if we did nothing and then it dawned on me that doing nothing was worse than doing something. 

We all have occasions when we are faced with choices that can seem risky, changing jobs is probably the main one we encounter.  Long one are the days when someone stayed in a job for life, never taking a chance to do something different. How many people moan about the job they are in, but never step away, reflect on what they have and then move on if it is not what they want.   Taking a risk is by its very nature scary, things may go wrong, humble pie may have to be eaten, but is that any reason not to take a risk

Since we have made this move, I have learnt a great deal about myself and where I have come from spiritually to get where I am today,  I am not referring to religion, but where my fears and anxieties come from.  My risk aversion, comes from my younger years and so taking the risk of moving to Spain has allowed me to look deep inside myself, to discover the why's and  now I started the cathartic process of  putting my thoughts down on paper to write a memoir of sorts.

 I believe that risk taking, can enable you to overcome fears and anxieties, it can allows you to look inside yourself and enable one to be proactive rather than reactive.  This does not mean that everything has been easy, in fact my very nature of not being a risk taker has increased  my stress levels,  BUT,  I did it, I took the risk and now we will see in the coming years if the risk was worth it.... that I suppose will depend on what you decide "worth" is.. More musings about that another day!

The next popular question was

Wont you miss your children.

At first I used to reply with the usual mantra, of course, but there is the phone, Internet and Skype,  and then after a while, to be perfectly honest, when someone asked this question I would roll my eyes to heaven, as this question was beginning to bore me.  Why?  because surely it was obvious, that I/we would  miss our children and family, what did people expect me to say, "oh no, only seeing the girls a few times a year will be great", "no problem looking forward to not having coffee with family and friends".

How have we coped, OK, I think,  it has not been easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is, after all, we have not exactly abandoned them, they are all grown up, leading lives of there own, fully supportive and keen to encourage, which makes us  proud of them, and us, for bringing into this world, 2 well rounded human beings who can recognise someone Else's needs as well as there own.   Wee  Skype face to face every week, no its not the same as seeing them but,  hundreds of people before us and even now, all over the world travel thousands of miles away from their families and may never have the opportunity to even telephone let alone Skype.  Regular visits are on the cards, so yes of course I miss my children, yes I wish they were here but they are in the UK and  we are here and we must deal with it.

As an aside, this was usually a question directed at me, Mum never at my Husband, who I  know misses his girls as much as I do, so when asking this question of someone, please do not forget, men can miss their children too.

Love is not about being inseparable its about being separated and nothing changes


Then we had

" Your so lucky, I wish I could do that"  - now I agree that we are "lucky" in one sense, we are lucky that I worked as a nurse, and therefore had the benefit being able to take early retirement, we are lucky that we had a house that had increased in value and were able to sell easily, but when I  asked the question back -  "well why don't you do it as well"  the answers were usually the same,  basically those individuals did not want to "give up" the lifestyle they had in the UK.  The reality is to live a different life, or like us, a more simple life, away from the rat race you have to give up something.  You need to be able to sacrifice some stuff to gain other stuff.   The real issue is that to live a "different" or "dream" life you have to realise that you cannot have everything. My friends and colleagues back in the UK wanted to have holidays, go out to dinner, the pictures etc, all of which is fine and dandy, it does not make their decision to continue there lifestyle wrong, but neither does it make me "lucky" It means that I/ we made the conscious decision to give up  or sacrifice certain things that we had in the UK, we decided that we could survive without dinner out every week, or exotic holidays.  Time will tell if we were right, but we are not "Lucky" we are just prepared to give up things for a different way of life

Finally there was the

What will you do, wont you be bored!!!!!!!!!

BORED  We have never been so busy, but busy in our own way, when we want, beholding to no-one, BUT the reason we are not bored is because we thought long and hard about what we wanted from early retirement, the easy option would have been, a house and a small garden and do..............well what, yes the romantic idea is to paint, and read or press wild flowers, and we like to do these things, as well as my crochet, embroidery etc, but  we believe for us there needs to be some focus, hence the Finca and a modicum of self sufficiency enabling us to work with the Rhythm of the year and nature, growing food and having livestock is hard work, so for us retirement  is about the fact that we stopped living at work and have begun working at living. So our days are now full, walking the dogs, looking after the land, and the other stuff, reading, painting etc, but the main thing is we now have the time to do what we want when we want, but with structure to build around, so on that note and  as  someone on the internet said

 The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off,

 So I must dash and pull a weed or two out of the ground.