A few years back I heard someone say, “I believe I was put here to ….”. and they thought they were going to have to do a lot of personal work so they could be better and fulfill their purpose.

I know this isn’t true. We aren’t broken and we don’t need fixing or healing.

When we have problems in life it is because we have wandered away from our home – our true self – and okay, we might be struggling because we feel lost, but that doesn’t mean our home has been destroyed.

Our “work”, if any, is simply… to find your way home to ‘self’ and there we find our home just as we left it. Perhaps a bit dusty and with some weeds to pull but it has not disappeared and it hasn’t been destroyed in our absence.

It reminded me of a movie that starts with a beautiful scene … children stripped down to the minimum in hot temperatures, running free, splashing in the water – muddy as it is – sounds of laughter and fun filling the air. The adults, off in the distance, attending to grown-up type things.

How far have we come from these simple pleasures! What joy there is in these simple things! Growing up in the Australian summers, I too recall how wonderful it is to splash in a puddle and run half naked under the sprinkler.

It does make you dirty and messy though, doesn’t it? Then, suddenly in contrast, a horrible scene … the powers that be, deeming it improper to be half naked, getting dirty with uncontrolled behaviour, swooping in, they take these children away, the children screaming loudly as they’re torn from the arms of their frantic mothers, or hiding in fear hoping not to be found.

They are taken to a more “proper and controlled environment”, where the rules and codes of the majority are taught and conformity is learned … where sitting still and quiet in white starched clothes is considered “civilised and superior”. A terrifying scene, don’t you agree? This is my description of the opening scenes of the movie, ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’, a true story of ‘the stolen generation’ of indigenous Australians. The children are taken far from their homes to be raised in institutions.

The movie follows two children who escape and seek their way home. The children come across a fence (a rabbit-proof fence) that reminds them of ‘home’ and they follow its length (2,023 mile – 3,256 kilometres) on foot. The fence guides them home. It provides a powerful metaphor for the journey of life.

We come into the world innately knowing how to be free and how to live life fully and unconstrained. This is ‘home’ for our spirit and being. Society then, with its many rules, ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’, swoops us from our ‘home’, and tells us it is superior to be serious and constrained, to behave this way or that. We become lost – taken from our home. Our job is to find our way home to our self.

Having travelled the world and experienced many cultures as a coach, trainer, friend and sister, I’ve come to understand that returning to the truth of who you are and living from there, is life’s journey. What is the ‘fence’, that reminds you of ‘home’ … that can be your guide to bring you home to you?

For your interest, here is a link to the trailer of the movie, Rabbit Proof Fence. Enjoy.