Airplane by Kossie@FINEDAYS
I know that the big New Year celebrations just got over, and you are all worn out on making resolutions and goals. You may have even abandoned some of them already, and are feeling like crap about it.
Now that your new fitness routine has crashed and burned, how about making a resolution that’s a little different?
Let’s say you want to travel with your family, but you are waiting for the perfect time. That time when the fates will smile down on your family and say, “Now is the time. You have the money. You have the time. The kids are old enough. Everyone is healthy.”
This might be a great big news flash, but that is never going to happen. In order to travel, you need to make it a priority. You need to make it as big a priority as the 87 soccer and baseball games you attend for your kids every year.
Travel is too often relegated to the backwaters of the luxury category, even after the Escalade and the gazebo for the backyard. If that is where you’re travel plans are, then you may as well banish Travelocity from your Delicious account and plan to admire your lilac bushes for the next twenty years, because you’re not going anywhere, and that’s a shame. Because seeing the world is like a little bit of heaven exploding right in your soul.
Staying home makes you boring, and other unfortunate facts
If you Google “Benefits of Travel”, you will get about 62,000 results spelling out the fact that you will be healthier, more well rounded, and way less boring than if you hang out edging your lawn on the weekend.
Mark Twain agrees because he said:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men andthings cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Mark Twain was smart.
If you are over 30, you better get going, because the longer you wait, the easier it is to convince yourself that the terrorists are everywhere, and people from other countries have 3 eyes and teach their kids to steal your stuff and eat at hash cafes.
A funny thing happens when you travel often. The more you fly, the safer you feel. The more people you meet, the better they seem to become. People are marvelous, and missing out on those who are different from you is just sad.
Don’t be boring. It’s an ugly color.
Staying home can make you sick…or mental
If being boring doesn’t scare the pants off you, then keeling over from a heart attack should, because guess what:
An annual vacation can cut a person’s risk of heart attack by 50 percent.
Gasp!
You knew that. You can feel it. Travel is good for your health. It can improve your physical health, your relationships, your intellectual ability, and your mental health. It says so right in the Travel Industry Association report on the health benefits of travel. They may be biased, but whatever, the thing is documented so who am I to argue?
Why be sick, or mental, or divorced when a week in Cancun can save you from it for far less than a divorce lawyer will ever cost? Not to mention the fact that you and your teenager will actually have fun together instead of fighting over the 8000 texts they sent last month, and none of them to you.
So the moral of the story is that if you want to travel, you need to treat it like a car repair, or the gas bill, and plan for it. In your budget, move “vacation” out of the luxury category and pop it into the “necessity” category.
Anything that can protect against narrow-mindedness, heart attacks, or nervous breakdowns and promote healthy, well adjusted families is the clear winner over a gas guzzling, world polluting, ego inflating Escalade any day.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Debbie,
Thanks for dropping by my site. Nice coincidence seeing the topic of your site. My wife and were just going over some tentative plans for taking our not-yet-three year old overseas for the first time, either London or Prague, later this year. He’s already been on a plane twice and done a couple 8+ hour drives. We’re lucky that he’s a well behaved boy – makes doing things like this a lot easier. So…happy I came by, I’m sure to pick up some tips.
Thanks for stopping, Bruce! What a lucky boy your son is. I think travel is the best gift you can give your kids. If he’s got a couple of 8 hour drives under his belt already, he’ll be able to handle anything by the time he’s five:)
MM5jsQ Good point. I hadn’t thought about it quite that way.