After uni I lived in London for a couple of years. I had an amazing time meeting people, seeing new places and adjusting to the British culture. When I came back I looked around for a job and eventually settled in a café that was competitively present in the 'specialty coffee' game.
There was a sharp learning curve at the café; a mentally demanding ordering system, an immense body of regulars and regular orders to familiarize myself with, the ins and outs of a well-oiled machine. I likened it early-on to learning a new language through immersing yourself in the culture. I worked long days and busy days and many days. I worked over weekends and public holidays and right on through the uni holidays my friends were enjoying. I changed my body clock to fit in with shifts that started at 6am and tried to reorganize my social life around the energy I was left with after 11hours on my feet. I learned about the many steps and stages in the process of producing a cup of coffee; much like the wine-world and all the detail therein. I spent hours and hours and hours running around the same floor, rehearsing a list of duties and growing in them week after week.
On the one hand it was difficult to move on from my job because I'd put so much work into becoming competent at it. As I trained new staff that were coming in, I started to realize just how much information I'd absorbed over the months. But on the other hand; the thing that actually made it very difficult to move on was the people I'd worked with. I'd been in a team of six people – I saw them more than I saw my family, I spent more time with them than I spent with my friends. They became my friends, they became my family.
Then one December day my final shift rolled around. It was like any other shift, but it was nothing like them. Surreal and sad, but still busy familiar. I'd counted down last shifts with different colleagues, taken photos together for the last time and then it was done.
It all got me thinking, as I am prone to do. It got me wondering about change and moving on and goodbyes. I flew away from my home three years ago; I left behind all I'd grown up with and all I'd known and I went to London. After two years in London I packed up my room and said goodbye to new friends without any real certainty about when we'd see each other again. And then here again I was moving on from people I cared about – saying goodbye and feeling sad.
Growing up I wasn't very good with change because I wasn't very good with loss. Moving from primary school to high school and from high school to uni, then from uni to a job and away from a job and up and out and overseas – all of these are new and good opportunities, but they are also moments of loss.
I wasn't sure how to reconcile my longing for something sturdy and secure with my knowledge that life was going to keep taking things away and people would keep moving on.
Even the sum total of life, if there is no more, becomes a collection of things and people and moments and memories that we get to bundle up together and then lose to death.
But I wasn't alone in this feeling. Abraham knew what this was like; he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents. He was out of his comfort, away from his familiarities, enduring change and loss. Hebrews says that he did this because he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. He was in a moment of transience, but he had the hope of true security, lasting stability. As I flew home from London and as I moved on from my job I hung onto that truth that there is a lasting city to come. I took my mantra from another verse in Hebrews that says: here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
It's an amazing thing to consider that all the significant stages of life that we pass through do not have to be met with a defeated acceptance of their ephemerality; but that there is a city to come that is firm and secure, that is sturdy and lasting. These days as I walk out of a place for the last time and as I say my final words to a friend who has become very close; I hang onto the promise of the city to come. Where the development of relationships and history will not soon be packed up and left behind, but will grow and deepen and develop in the security of permanence.
Sam Manchester is a University of Sydney graduate interested in Sociology and Ethnography. He spent a couple of years living and studying in London, but now is home on the North Shore enjoying Sydney's arts and social scene and seeking out the future.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html