Cuba and Me!

At yum cha yesterday, Aussie Christine was talking about her upcoming trip to Cuba and, deeply envious, I said "Lucky you. I've always wanted to see Havana." and she turns to me and says "Why don't you come with me?" and I thought "Whoa! I can't go to Cuba!" ... and immediately something very akin to an explosion in my head goes "Why can't I?" and thus, totally unexpectedly, I hear myself say "OK, I'll do it!"

And that's why I'm going to Cuba next month.

Only it isn't that easy. Aussie Christine booked weeks ago and when I went in yesterday to reserve a place on the same tour there were no places left. However, rather than being despondent about it, I wrote to them and asked if they'd wait-list me ... and I've just got an e-mail saying someone wants to change their dates and they may just have a place available and they'll get back to me when they know for sure ... so it could very well still be happening!

Yayyyy!

Cuba and I go back a long way. In fact, in the Murphy-sense of the word, Cuba is definitely one of "my ghosts".

What I mean by that is, in my family, we all believe words are vitally important and that you must do everything you say you're going to do, and if you don't, those things become "one's personal ghosts" which somehow tangle up in your life and pull you from your true path.

And maybe Cuba was my true path. See, back in 1976, I was invited to visit Cuba as Fiji's representative at an International Youth Conference in Havana and I was so excited about it because it felt so right, and then all the negative-nelly nay-sayers materialised and I had so many grown-ups kept telling me that the whole thing was a hoax and that the Communists intended to kidnap us and sell us as slaves to Angola ... and back then, as a teenager, I didn't yet realise how truly ridiculous most grown-ups truly were and I believed them ... and thus I turned the trip down and Fiji chose Sam to go in my place and, rather than becoming an Angolan slave, he had a truly fabulous time, and so I've always regretted I listened to other people instead of my own instincts.

And over the years, I've met so many people who were at that very conference and, yes, they've all said "Oh, I remember Sam. He was great!" and, in consequence, I've always thought "Since our paths have crossed since, I was meant to meet you back then, which really means I was sooo meant to be there!" ... and so this "ghost" has been hovering over my life for many decades.

So now, if the Universe so decrees it, I will finally go out to confront this "ghost"! I wonder if it will change anything about my life. My mother and I once had a very interesting discussion on this very topic. I had just read Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" and, because I knew it was one of her favourite books, I told her I had absolutely no idea what the sodding novel was about, and that's when she explained it to me as she saw it:

Have you read "To the Lighthouse"? In it, the Ramsey family keep talking about taking a boat out to see the lighthouse on the horizon, but never get around to it ... and bad things keep happening, like World War I, and they all keep dying off and failing and having their dreams unrealised and they just get sadder and more contemptible, until, finally, 30 years after the trip is first proposed, Professor Ramsey, the only survivor, finally takes the boat out to the lighthouse, and when he steps off onto the island, suddenly everything makes sense to him ... and that's where the books end and we never actually find out what it is that makes sense and it's all very strange and, well, I first thought it was all really quite silly, until mum explained ...

... that if you defer and procrastinate and don't do what you're meant to, well, things go very wrong with your life and you never actually take your true path and yadda yadda yadda!

So Cuba is obviously something I'm meant to do, although, like Professor Ramsey, it's thirty years too late!

Also, you know, if I go to Cuba, you'll go to Cuba because I'll be blogging it and thus you'll know all about the place too ... so please cross your fingers for me.

Yayyyy, Cuba!!!