Life Change

The incessant hum of the traffic lulls him into a dreamlike state, as it usually does, of unconscious awareness. Just the thought of the word traffic sends shivers down his spine. Reflecting on a recent trip to the Philippines, William Naylor still finds it difficult to comprehend the abject poverty of the majority from this island archipelago. The reality that not only is there traffic from the car chaos in Manila, but the fact that humans too, have also become commodities, trafficked as such, in nothing short of a modern day slave trade. He contemplates what Abraham Lincoln would think if he knew that in 2011 we still didn’t believe ‘that all men are created free and equal'.


His view from the fourteenth floor of the office building, where William has been an IT Specialist for the past 15 years, over looks Sydney’s Central Station. His attention now turns from the traffic he can hear to the people he can see coming and going and he wonders who they are. His eyes are drawn to a group of teenage school boys waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. They appear to be singling out one of the smaller guys. This is painful for William to observe as he recalls his years at high school and reminds himself, “I did enjoy primary school [public] but once I moved to high school [an all-boys private school], I was bullied extensively. I was so small for my age and didn’t know anybody. I will never forget that experience at the start of year 7. We did a test, algebra. I had never seen algebra before! I couldn’t comprehend what letters had to do with numbers, I got 9/100. The teacher pulled me up in front of the class and told everyone that I was really dumb. I ended up in remedial maths class.” But he refuses to dwell on this scene from the window or the one in his mind and engages his eyes elsewhere.


William is determined to make something of his life and has worked hard to get where he is today. Ignoring his father’s wishes for him to become a mechanic, and specialised in IT. However, even this seems somewhat futile, reasoning; “It becomes harder to look at server event logs and walk around the office to fix printers or find that document that someone had lost”. At the age of 41 he has got use to some things staying the same and use to other things that have changed. But William, like so many disenchanted generation X’ers, is seeking a meaningful change. Not just a ‘sea change’ or ‘tree change’, it’s not even just a ‘career change’. But William is seeking a ‘life change’ not to be defined by his past experience but to be refined by it. Not to just take what he can get out of life, but make a contribution, to give back. This is why William Naylor wants to become a writer.......just sayin' .