Ten past eight on Friday. Airline lounge, cooling heels, waiting on a bing-bong to herald my departure to my Arrival.

Generally this is one of my favorite parts of any trip, whether it's a day or a couple of weeks. This is the space where I get to reflect on the time away, and what that time has held and imparted, before the buzz of a more normal life begins again.

This trip, this refelction, is somehow richer. The context is varied, but the main vein is rooted in a fresh revelation of what I'm doing, in a professional sense. This is more than just a job. My day-to-day impacts how people feel about the place they work, the people the work with, the work they are doing. It impacts how people feel about themselves.

This week I missed my girls incredibly. I missed hearing about their days. I missed sharing life. I missed the sparkle. I missed saving them from the yukkie bits of life. I missed the connection to home life that comes through folding laundry and cleaning the kitchen at the end of the day.

The void that miss-age created was filled, however, with a group of very interesting gentlemen. Ockers. Passionate salesmen who spend their days in some of the remotest parts of Australia, who love the work they do, and are frustrated by not being able to do it as they see best. How common is that story! Blokes who love their footie, their aussie reds, their families and the feeling that the contribute to something Big.

And talking to them over dinner was like being transported back 15 years to tobacco farms in Zimbabwe. The same issues. The same thirst to try and control the uncontrollable. The same philosophical laugh when we all agree at the end of a heated conversation that there are some things we should just accept.

I love how, in an ever changing, ever evolving world, that there are constants. To change, to grow to something new, there has to be a start point. A weird thought has just struck me, and it's hard to articulate. We spend our lives changing, but it seems that we're constantly changing from the same start point. We change, we evolve, we adapt, and then seem to come full circle back to some place of Constant, before we need to change, evolve and adapt again.

Is that true? Or is that pie-in-the-sky?

No clue. Worth thinking about though, and think I will. But now it's time to board a sophisticated tin can, and wing my way back to Haven Space.

Bing-bong.

Hmmmm...

The world outside is Sydney.

The Sydney Tower is right outside the hotel window. Like a giant cable-bound Peeping Tom, only about 70 metres too tall to bother me. The lights of the big buildings meld into the light of suburbia, and these twinkle away to the horizon north of me.

Inside, it's the same. A desk, a bed, a TV. Hotel room familiarity. The kind that breeds comtempt. The TV with a schedule of programmes that really is quite unsatisfactory. The hum of the aircon. The aircon that is always too cold. The hotel room art, invariably a numbered, signed print of an original. The bath room with no natural light.

Winge. Moan. My life is so hard. 5 star hotel. Shopping in one of the best cities in the world. There's a note on my pillow that says I have the choice of six types of pillows. I got up-graded to a Club Room. Down the hall is the Club Lounge, and according to my personalised letter from the General Manager, presented to me at check, I have full use of the club facilities. Free internet, free drinks, and nibbles between five and seven. My meal was a phone call away. I have a coffee machine in the room.

Sheesh - perspective is a hard, heavy thwack to the cranium.

I don't enjoy travelling on business, being away from home and the girls. I don't like missing Significant Moments. I don't like cooling my heels in airport lounges, sitting on tarmacs, or the whoosh-click-click of hotel room doors. But the truth is, this travel has its upside. I've seen some amazing places, met some neat people, collected a bunch of amazing airpoints and felt the thrill of coming home.

And I guess it's become a part of the plot of our story. Imagine what we would have been without the travel. A dimension of who we've become would just simply be missing. Dimension has cost. There's today epiphany. Dimension and depth carry a price tag. The richer the fabric, the more you pay.

So, a question begs an answer. The cost has been paid, the dimension bought, but to what end? What do we put our dimension to. Does the richness of our fabric serve a purpose, or hang on the wall like a tapestry.

Hmmmm.