Noosa Heads is a coastal town and suburb of the Shire of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. It is located approximately 136 kilometres (85 mi) north of Brisbane, the state’s capital.

As my erstwhile physician continues his adventurous and unbroken trek about the globe I have the chance advantage of acquainting myself quite comfortably from my drawing room winter seat on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with the objects of his travel albeit an exceptionally cursory glimpse alone.

Though I am following my friend on this particular voyage of his, it is not a habit to which I am accustomed.  Indeed I am quick to note that it would have been quite overwhelming were I to have intended doing so in the past.  My friend is an inveterate traveler, a merciless though urbane vagabond. Never have I known anyone such as he so devoted to touring the world.  I cannot begin to name the places he has been – and that would in any event include only his worldly ramblings in the past thirty-five years approximately during which we have been acquainted. His motto is “Keep moving!”

By odd contrast to the unblemished wayfarer spirit of my friend, he nonetheless maintains a rural estate in a winsome village nearby where I live; and, he has other propriety interests in the United States of America (in addition perhaps to others of which I have no personal knowledge). Such immovable attachment to particles of the globe about which he so relentlessly travels bodes an undisguised familiarity with contrasting sedation. Naturally the possibility exists – as no doubt it does in this instance – that one can have one’s cake and eat it too; viz., that being an incorrigible traveler does not predict the down-home habitué. But it does nonetheless promote the further exoteric inquiry, why maintain such a bipolar existence?  Surely there must be sustenance in relieving oneself of the obligation of maintenance, insurance and protection of absentee freehold.  Or, does the antinomy capture the greater – perhaps purely psychological – imperative that each of us needs a nest within which to distinguish ourselves no matter the consequence?

There is one other interpretation of the seeming duality – and that is uncertainty. From the depths of history realty has afforded the complementary symbol of both settlement and opportunity, one permanent, the other ephemeral. In some instances – such as the escape of King James II from England to France following the Glorious Revolution in 1688 – the flying relocation from his former grounded monarchy to the life of a vagrant interloper (with but a boatload of his precious belongings) was an adventitious but astute resolve. As an ardent believer in the bipolar perception of life it is an alternative which speaks to me though recognizably it is not a privilege for everyone – but what is? Therein perhaps lies the trick to understanding; namely, each of us must listen to our instinct since beyond that everything is always uncertain. We have to swim in the ocean while yet we can.