Alice is now 85, staring out a gloomy window reminiscing about her life, her long loving life. She kept a journal under her floorboard with her favorite photographic memory with her mother and father, it contained of places to be, things to do, and people to see all before her soul left the Earth. She quickly reflected on her life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. Alice can hardly achieve anything she has written in her journal, and her life told that story. However, she did get married and had a beautiful family, got her dream job, and lived her life to what she thought was living to the fullest.
Too late to realize, she wasn’t living at all- not one bit. Alice never pursued her love to travel, never made time to go on spontaneous trips or disappear into the mountains for a weekend. However, the difference between me and Alice, I never want to realize that life is full of sempiternal journeys when it is too late. Seeing the world, learning new languages and cultures, going against my conscience and eating suspicious food but doing it anyways because simply; it is the way of life. Adventurous and spontaneous. As it’s always said, “Living the American Dream,” now that is what I want to achieve in my lifetime here on planet Earth.
To live; even if it is broken, to feel joy, even if it is overrated and annoying, and to pray; even if you are at your highest point in life. Starting this ‘dream life’ is when you lay down your life, only to get back up again. I’m living this life, before I am too grey and old, or too fragile and immobile, with all the strength, time, and ability that I have now. Sending postcards upon postcards to my family and friends from all over the world- maybe even have some of them to come with me. What’s a good trip, if you take it by yourself? I found love, and a amily; however that is not an excuse for me to stop living this life. No dream is too big nor too small, you want it, go get it.
The only thing that will ever hold you back is the reflection in the mirror that you make every morning and night. This, I believe, is constantly living life. But, hold up! Don’t hang on every glorious word I speak of, being misguided is one of the most common and terrible things the world has to offer you. The world is a tough place, but you are tougher. Instead, walk God’s path that is how you survive this thing called the never-ending-world.
Look left, instead of right, go fast instead of slow, and breathe deeply, not shortly. While you’re young, you should travel. You should take the time to see the world and taste the fullness of life. Spend an afternoon sitting in front of the Michelangelo. Walk the streets of Paris. Climb Kilimanjaro. Hike the Appalachian Trail. See the Great Wall of China. Get your heart broken by the “killing fields” of Cambodia. Swim through the Great Barrier Reef. These are the moments that define the rest of your life; they’re the experiences that write the story you’ve been waiting for.
Traveling will change you like little else can. It will put you in places that will force you to care for issues that are bigger than you. You will begin to understand that the world is both very large and very small. There so many ways you can travel without breaking the bank. One of the highly underutilized expenses is renting your getaway home or staying in a hotel. This can cost half of what it would to stay at a hotel and the best part is, you have the whole place to yourself. Every spring break I gather a group of friends and rent a house for a week. This only cost us about $25 a day per person on average.
Last spring break I only spent $150 on travel expenses for a week in Padre Island, TX. Now that is what I’m talking about! Find the balance of travel that’s right for you. Take every opportunity to make that travel an important value in your life. Move abroad. Spend 12 weeks backpacking. Travel for a month straight. Take a road-trip. Plan a weekend getaway. Go explore the neighborhoods around your city, travel to states that border ning, your own, or take a trek to an exotic location halfway around the world. Do it while you’re young; set a precedent. Small paychecks and big memories.
What, then, shall we call this discovery that can change us so radically and yet make us so healthy? And, what shall we call those who have experienced it? By now it should be obvious that all Christians are born again into the gap between God’s world-wide purpose and the fulfillment of it. But there’s more than one kind of response to that gap. At 20 years of age, I don’t profess to know every but having just about finished my education and wanting to jump on a plane for a year to travel the world, to all 6 continents; I can tell you with 100% certainty and accuracy that there are many things you can’t learn from an education.
Things like independence, patience, understanding, appreciation, cultural immersion, feeling out of your comfort zone, budgeting, and the list goes on and on. There’s so much you can learn from travel that you simply won’t get elsewhere. Ella Wheller Wilcox said it best, “Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than us to do it. “