Getting Your Priorities Right

Youth is wasted on the young. Never were truer words spoken.

I spent my youth ignoring the beauty around me. Being intensely interested in the achievement of goals without stopping to wonder at this planet’s riches.

I can tell you why the sun shines, no really, I can tell you exactly why and how the sun shines. But it’s only as I have matured that I have begun to appreciate the simple pleasure of feeling the sun kiss my face in the morning.

This is in no small part due to Suzanne. She saw what was in me and has helped me to realise that potential. Not academically, or professionally, that’s just hard work and dedication, the easy stuff. No, she showed me how to step back from the modern world and enjoy what really matters.

There’s nothing I want more at this moment than to be sat on a balcony, overlooking the ocean in the Mediterranean, fresh orange juice in hand.

The air is still cool from the previous night, but the sun is already warming the ground. It’s quiet, but an occasional voice can be heard, not English voices. It could be French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, but not English voices. I don’t want to hear any English for a whole week.

Closer to the equator the quality of light is so different. The air is refreshing, why? Maybe because I know I’m so far from the job, the pressure, the banality of it all. And I’m here with her. No interruptions, no telephones, no emails, just us.

To be there with my lover, knowing that we can if we wish spend the whole day in bed, or at the beach or … well anywhere we want. That’s it isn’t it, choice, liberation, freedom.

Look at the sea, hear the sea, smell it, taste it. The waves lapping against skin, sensual, sexual. I’ve never craved it as I do now. But I don’t think it’s the sea that calls me but what all this represents. Being alone with her, able to explore each other.

Making love on strange sheets. Eating at odd hours, sleeping when we choose, watching the sunset and sunrise, everyone, everything else fitting in around us and our desire for each other.

I now understand what mariners see in boats. Not just the challenge of sailing, but the solitude and the freedom to go where your heart desires. The gentle swell (of the ocean, stop it people, behave) the creak of the rigging, the sun beating down on the deck.

I’ve never fucked on a boat, it just got added to my to-do list. So now I’m thinking about how to work that into our next holiday. This is getting expensive. But I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Hell, I just thought of another to-do. Making love to Suze on every continent of the world. Luckily my common sense stopped me from adding “every country in the world” to the to-do list. That would be impractical.

I so need a holiday.