The Truth Behind Family Travel
Now this is theater at its very best: Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Travel has nothing to do with demographics – age, ideology or income and it has everything to do with personal outlook.
Travel isn’t about being a college student; it’s about being a student of daily life.
Travel isn’t an act of rebellion against society; it’s an act of common sense within society.
Travel doesn’t require a massive ‘bundle of cash‘; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.
It’s about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions.
It’s an Attitude
The Kecak dance in Bali Indonesia.
A friendly interest in people, places and things that makes an explorer in the truest most vivid sense of the word.
It’s about time – our only real commodity – and how we choose to use it.
It is not about the fickle public definition of lifestyle, rather, it is a private choice within a society that is constantly urging us to choose the status quo.
It’s about looking and learning, facing fears and altering habits, cultivating a new fascination with people and places.
“Don’t be one of those people that gets to the end of their life and wishes they had done this or done that or hiked this trail or spent a month on that island just down by the tip of Italy. Don’t get to the end of your life and wished you’d done something special and unique with your kids when you could have. You’ve got a window … and it’s closing … from the moment they’re born it’s closing. You’ve got a choice. There’s a lot in life you want to do. You dream about. But this isn’t like reading Shakespeare or learning Greek or taking a pottery course. Those things you can do when you’re 22 or 82 and it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. But traveling with your kids is something you have to do now. You have to start now. Start planning. Start thinking. Start thumbing through guide books, running your fingers over maps, staring at pictures of beaches and mountains and rope bridges and great teeming Asian markets and see yourself, with your kids, slowly weaving your way through the magic. – My Little Nomads”
It’s a Choice
Exploring the Mekong Delta in Vietnam
We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right.
Thus given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none.
Settling into our lives we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.
The choice begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps.
It Involves Sacrifice
My wife in recovery after being hit by a moped in Vietnam.
Yes, there will be sacrifices, and sacrifices are not for everyone.
Your ability to travel as a family is not found in the process of travel itself but in the process of earning your freedom to travel.
Earning your freedom involves work – and work is intrinsic for intellectual reasons as much as financial ones.
This blog is based on the premise that deep down we all harbor one fiercely held aspiration and understanding within our family.
That what defines a family cannot be measured in terms of what you consume or own.