I always get from people– “oh I wish I had your job”… said with longing.
It makes me bristle a little cuz it always seems like they think I’m on permanent vacation–sipping margaritas by the pool. And, tho I do enjoy a margarita now and then mostly I’m working and really hard.
But, this isn’t about what a hard worker I am. It’s about priorities and how I think there’s a difference between vacation and travel. And how I think that some people value travel and other people, though they like a vacation now and then, value other things.
As all my friends will attest, I am constantly trying to get them off their duffs and out the door to join me on an adventure. Most often they cry that they don’t have time and they can’t afford it. Well, I definitely can’t afford it but I do it anyway because it feeds my soul. It’s also good for my business to keep traveling and expanding my world so that I can help to make these experiences available to other people. But, sometimes they come along and we have the usual mix of wonderful experiences, total misses, complete embarassments, transformative food, plenty of wine, and I daresay we are the better for it.
One thing about the priorities (and I’m in no way saying that mine are better than yours–they’re just mine) my husband and I don’t have an expensive house or a car payment, or kids. I don’t have any designer bags or shoes. We don’t have much of the latest anything (unless it’s for work). We have everything we need.. and we spend whatever money we have left over to travel, because it’s what we value.
A couple of things crossed my path this morning that made reminded me about this. First, this Chinese proverb
“He who returned from a journey is not the same as he who left.”
and second, this response from my favorite travel geek, Rick Steves, when asked
“What’s the most important thing people can learn from traveling?”
“A broader perspective. They can see themselves as part of a family of humankind. It’s just quite an adjustment to find out that the people who sit on toilets on this planet are the odd ones. Most people squat. You’re raised thinking this is the civilized way to go to the bathroom. But it’s not. It’s the Western way to go to the bathroom. But it’s not more civilized than somebody who squats. A man in Afghanistan once told me that a third of this planet eats with spoons and forks, and a third of the planet eats with chopsticks, and a third eats with their fingers. And they’re all just as civilized as one another.”
Read more of that great interview with the guru himself at Salon.com
Another quote I love–and I remember using this one in my college entrance essays (some things don’t change much, I guess), is from T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot
Am I making sense here?
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