An idea from the journey

Five Seasons in One Life

I thought I was leaving Brisbane to discover the seasons of the world. It took me more than thirty years to discover my own.

When I left Brisbane at nineteen, I thought the countries I visited would become the story. When I eventually wrote my memoir, I realised the places had simply been the backdrop.

The deeper pattern only became visible after the journey had been lived. Looking back, I could see four seasons repeating through different chapters of my life, followed by a fifth season that allowed me to notice them.

The Season of Leaving

(Spring)

Every meaningful chapter began by leaving something behind. Sometimes it was a place, sometimes certainty and sometimes simply a version of myself that had become too comfortable.

World Expo '88 planted the first seed that the world was much larger than Brisbane. Pancreatitis delayed that dream but never removed it. When I finally left home, I headed to the Whitsundays to discover whether the life I imagined was even possible with my illness. That confidence eventually carried me to London, where I already knew around twenty Australians. Instead of choosing familiarity, I bought a ticket to Rhodes because curiosity offered something I could not yet explain. That decision introduced me to sailing, which later led towards an ocean crossing.

Looking back, every important chapter of my life began in much the same way. Before something new could grow, something familiar first had to be left behind.

The Season of Living

(Summer)

Eventually the unknown became ordinary. Sailing became daily life instead of an adventure. Rugby tours became part of the calendar. Writing my memoir became work rather than an impossible ambition. These were the seasons where curiosity became experience and experience quietly became everyday life.

At the time they simply felt normal, yet they were slowly becoming the stories I would later reflect upon. Nature's summer is not the season when things begin. It is the season when growth becomes visible. My own summers were the same. They were not about searching for what came next, but fully living the chapter that curiosity had already created.

The Season of Letting Go

(Autumn)

This was always the hardest season to recognise because nothing appeared to be wrong. The Whitsundays, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and even the world of publishing all gave me exactly what I needed until, almost without noticing, curiosity slowly gave way to familiarity.

The places were still beautiful, the people remained generous and the opportunities were still worthwhile, but the season had quietly offered everything it could. Years later I found the same pattern while editing and publishing my memoir. I learnt a great deal, but eventually realised I was beginning to ask the same questions as everyone else. Nothing had failed. It was simply time for another spring.

Nature's autumn is not the end of life. It is the season that prepares the beginning of another cycle. My own autumns were not failures either. They simply arrived when curiosity had finished teaching me what it came to teach.

The Season of Waiting

(Winter)

This was the season I resisted most because waiting rarely feels like progress while you are living through it. Pancreatitis delayed the life I thought I was meant to live before it had properly begun. Visa applications interrupted journeys that seemed ready to continue. An unexpected period in a detention centre became another chapter where life appeared to stand still.

Even writing my memoir carried its own winter as more than twenty years passed between imagining the book and finally becoming an author. It took time to realise that none of those winters had been empty. Each had quietly prepared the chapter that followed, even if I could not see it at the time.

Nature's winter often appears empty because so much of its work happens beneath the surface. My own winters looked much the same. They felt like interruptions while I was living them, yet almost every one was quietly preparing the spring that followed.

The Season of Noticing

(The Fifth Season)

It took writing my memoir, publishing it and then stepping away from it before I realised there was a fifth season.

The first four are seasons of living. They are experienced one day at a time and rarely recognised while we are moving through them. The fifth is different. It does not replace the others. It reveals them.

I had to discover a fifth season before I could identify the first four. Only then could I see that the countries had changed, the people had changed and the adventures had changed. Even the ideas that would later become Socialising Equality, Fakaging and The Gift of Eight Guilt-Free Hours had grown from completely different chapters of my life.

They were not discoveries made while I was living those moments. They only became visible once I stepped back and began noticing the pattern that connected them all.

The fifth season changes the way the others look

The first four seasons are lived one day at a time. They are difficult to recognise while you are inside them because life rarely announces which season you are entering.

The fifth season arrives later. It is the ability to step back and notice what was happening beneath all the changes. Countries changed. Careers changed. Relationships changed. The questions changed. Yet a rhythm kept returning.

That is what happened when I looked back at my own life. Experiences that had once seemed unrelated began to connect. Ideas such as Socialising Equality, Fakaging and The Gift of Eight Guilt-Free Hours had emerged from completely different chapters, but they became easier to understand once I could see the pattern behind the journey.

The journey gives you experiences. Distance gives you perspective.

Sometimes you cannot understand the season you are living until you have moved far enough away from it to see what it was preparing.

The memoir came first

I did not set out to write a book about five seasons. I set out to preserve memories and tell the story of a life shaped by travel, hearing difficulties, recurring illness, uncertainty and curiosity.

The pattern appeared afterwards. That is why the memoir tells the story first. The conclusions became possible because the experiences came before them.

The story behind the seasons

No, I Won't Buy You a Drink!

A true Australian travel memoir written through the lens of Ricardo, following a journey through the face to face world of the 1990s.

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