Project yourself back to your first-holiday memory – what do you see? Perhaps it begins like this:
You’re about 6 years old and the sun has just begun to rise and break through the night sky, birds chirping as they swoop down to find their early-bird-worm-of-champions. You can barely contain your excitement, or remember to use your ‘inside’ voice, because today is the day that you and your family embark on this thing Mom and Dad call a ‘vacation.’ Although you’ve heard some of your classmates tell tales of their holidays, during their rendition of ‘daily news’ on Monday mornings, you’ve never had your own holiday experience – until now.
Rewind the clock to your teenage years, when the world around you was a new kind of confusing. Remember how you dreaded the road trip en route to those family vacations, being stuck in the car with your fidgeting sibling and your dad complaining after every stop your Mom forces him to make – all because he wants to make ‘good time.’ As you look back on this exasperating procedure, you recall the moment when everything changed – the exact moment when you experienced ‘love’ for the first time, it wasn’t merely a popular movie plot but it could actually happen in real life! And just like that, vacations became a whole different kind of experience.
Do you recall the time in your life you affectionately refer to as your ‘trying twenties?’ A whole decade dedicated to finding yourself. This period marked with a porous understanding of who you are, your life’s purpose, and the multitude of questions that devoured the majority of your day. The best decision you ever made was to use your savings and head out on an adventure –packed with travel, meeting new people, and broadening your horizons to become acquainted with what was out of your comfort zone, to truly become the person you are today.
So you see, none of these experiences would have come to fruition and these memories would never have been made. We must always remember that when we explore the world, when we break out from the four plain walls that surround us every day, there is the possibility for those truly wonderful experience from which memorable moments are formed – some will remain cushioned in your minds memory box for years to come. Without the travel and get-aways our vacations afford us, we won’t have that rich heritage of exciting stories to pass on to our loved ones, or get to share these precious experiences with them.
While it’s always good to practice restraint, especially during very trying economic times like these – sometimes it doesn’t hurt to throw caution to the wind in your pursuit of life’s many pleasures. Perhaps now is not the time to be hesitant – book your holiday and continue to make every moment matter.
