I recall after he married in Poland seven years ago, how he and his Polish bride returned to Australia where they had previously resided and for the first time in his life, he started to adopt a more conventional lifestyle. I'll never forget him telling me over the phone that just because he now had a house, wife and a suited-and-booted job, 'I feel like I've sold out to the consumerist society.' I told Will, (his preferred name) not to beat himself up too much about having settled down into a more normal lifestyle because we all 'sell out' at that time in life 'when the price is right!'
I explained that in my view it is a natural part of growing from idealistic youth into more cynical/realistic adult to change one's political perspective from extreme left towards extreme right as one gets older and, not to do so, usually signifies one 'being stuck in the past and failing to change with the times.'
Part of me has always suspected deep down that the reason why many people turn to Religion in older years is that it allows one to continue to preach socialist principles whilst practising Conservative ways, and thereby settling into a new and more comfortable type of hypocrisy. We're a strange old breed, aren't we?
Anyway, over the past three years, our Will decided categorically that such a conventional lifestyle, philosophy and set of beliefs wasn't for him and he became what many would probably describe as a 'New Millennium Hippy', but without the drugs I'm glad to say (As far as I'm aware).
Sadly Will and his wife's relationship wasn't meant to be and they parted and divorced. Over the past two years, Will abandoned the modern lifestyle that Australia has to offer and has opted for the simple life, along with Josefine, his partner of like mind. They have travelled across Australia spreading their style of Yoga. This Yoga business of theirs, along with house babysitting all over the world while the house owners holiday, plus any other type of work that comes their way, enable them to eat healthily and travel and live in their camper van. The totally of what they own and possess can be carried in a rucksack. Just as I recall reading what the philosopher Aristotle once remarked as he went through the marketplace, 'I never knew there were so many things in the world that I neither needed nor wanted.'
As for politics, I think there is no left or right for him today; if anything he is apolitical. However, where he and Churchill, Thatcher and a few others are distinctly alike, he has learned how to stick two fingers up at the world! All in all, he's just another rebellious Forde through and through, though less conventional and less hypocritical in the process than the rest of us!" William Forde: April 21st, 2018.