Skip the designer clothes. I don't have a hunger for fancy, four star restaurants. I don't need to drive around in a thirty thousand dollar vehicle, thank you very much. And I can certainly live without Pottery Barn home accessories. (That's what Ikea and Pier 1 are for...)
Save it all, slap it into the bank, and stamp travel on it.
Exploring, searching, relaxing, seeing, learning, loving, living - that's what travel is all about. A thrilling adventure. A chance to break away from the daily grind and reconnect with who-you-really-are.
Travel allows you to escape yourself long enough so that you can find yourself.
Most people don't travel enough. They don't vacation enough. And they certainly don't take enough time to stop in their tracks and smell the roses.
I can't remember the exact statistics, but it's said that Americans take somewhere between two weeks to one month less vacation days than the rest of the world. That's fourteen to thirty days less than what we already take now. (Which, for the majority of us, isn't much to begin with.)
God, it's no wonder that stress and depression threaten the lives of over half our country's population.
Most folks will claim that they can't afford to take that much time off of work. And I can understand, to a degree. Believe me.
But when is it worth it? When does never taking a day off benefit YOU? What reward are you really going to get by going in to the office when you're sick? Or turning down a chance to spend time with family that you already don't get to see enough of in the first place? All because you feel you can't ask for time off from work? Because you feel you can't spend more than a day or two away from your job?
When you're on your death bed, are you going to get a prize? An extension? A bonus for spending so much time at work that you didn't get to enjoy your life? Will you get a gold star for working your fingers to the bone at a job that you really didn't like much to begin with?
Life is precious. Too precious to live for anyone but yourself. And definitely too short to live the same day twice.
Very recently, I heard of a couple who decided that life was too precious to live the same day over and over again. They sold their house, cars and pretty much all of their material possessions, bought a boat and spent several years sailing around the world - meeting people, creating new opportunities, seeking new adventures, appreciating each other and, basically, just living life to the fullest.
Now, while Chris and I aren't yet ready for that kind of leap, we are lucky enough to have been bitten by the Travel Bug. We do realize how important it is to take time off for ourselves. Time to quench our thirst for travel. Time to explore this beautiful world that we're so fortunate enough to inhabit. Time to live life to the fullest every day - not just for four days out of the year.
And because I woke up this morning missing San Juan Island so much it hurt, here's a shot from the ferry we took on the way over. Leaving at four o'clock in the morning definitely had its advantages.
______________________"The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else- we are the busiest people in the world."
-- Eric Hoffer
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