Traveling Girl With a Glass

My camel, Bob Marley, loped along serenely, as I gripped the iron handles protruding from the… saddle? Is it a saddle that sits on top of a camel? Whatever, you know what I mean… as if I were, ahem… steering.

That’s right. Yours truly was trying to steer a camel.

Bob Marley could not feel this earnest effort, nor would he have cared if he could. His job was to walk behind the “camel driver” (an interesting moniker describing the person who walks in front of the camel), and he performed his duties perfectly.

It finally dawned on me, about a half hour into the ride to our camp in the Sahara, that no input from me was required. Bob Marley was going to do whatever he was going to do no matter who was on his back. My “input”, as it were, was completely and ridiculously and obviously futile, plus it was making my hands and my back hurt.

Camels, for those who have never ridden one (a group that included me until two days ago), are enormous. You get on and off of them because they agree, at the driver’s request, to kneel down and let you on… it looks something like this:

We might as well have been flies on their backs.

But once you’re on, it feels like you need to… I don’t know, like stabilize yourself or steer or something…but if you try to stiffen against the loping, jostling movement, to “hang on”, it actually makes everything worse. You feel less stable.

If, however, you just go with it – allow the massive loping animal beneath you to jostle you and allow your body to sway with it – well, then it feels just fine.

Isn’t that a metaphor for… everything. Life.

The last year should have been a master class for me in letting go. Nothing, and I mean nothing, went the way I had meticulously planned it. Turns out work teams and families and stock markets can’t be steered any more effectively than camels, but it took a camel to finally get that through my thick head.

And what a relief! None of it was ever my job, and resisting and hanging on was just making my back hurt.

Here are some more photos from our truly fabulous trip… Morocco is a gorgeous country, filled with some of the kindest people I’ve met in my travels, and I’ve met a lot of kind people. We visited a tannery in Fes, bought carpets from Berbers in the Sahara, drove through the Atlas mountains, rode camels, spent a night in a tent (a VERY nice tent) in the Sahara, and ate enough chicken tagines to last me the rest of my life. The food, the scenery, the art, the people… all absolutely terrific. Chokran (thank you), Morocco ❤️.

I’m going to endeavor to do a bit more loping along with life from now on. Swaying with it, rather than hanging on for dear life, sounds like a lot more fun.

Join me?

Cheers!

Traveling Girl

“The last stall is empty”, a woman’s voice echoed in the tiled bathroom.

I looked around to see where the voice was coming from. Brown eyes smiled at me from a small opening in a burka. I realized, at that moment, that I’ve never spoken to a woman in a burka. I mean, that makes sense, given that I live in Colorado, but yet it suddenly made me feel very naive.

“My grandmother is in the other stall, the last one is open”, she clarified. In perfect English. Just a woman helping out another woman in a bathroom. As we do.

Then out of the other stall emerged her grandmother, looking for all the world like a grandma from middle America. Dyed short red hair, a colorful sweater, reading glasses hanging from her neck. No burka, not even a head scarf. They both nodded at me and walked out.

Why did I find this strange? Again with the preconceptions. My traveling companions and I have been discussing other thought-provoking questions in the last few days – I’ll give you some examples…

Why do we not give beggars any money here? Our driver does – he gives a few coins to nearly anyone that asks. Part of Islam, he explained, is to give to others. To people, not necessarily to the mosque. We had been walking by and giving nothing. Why?

We’re conditioned not to, that’s at least part of why. It makes us uncomfortable so we just keep walking.

We can surely spare something, we are wealthy Americans who had been shopping in the souk all day. We are, all three of us, charitable and kind people. And yet. I bought four scarves but didn’t give a begging woman a few coins. That kept me up last night, as well it should.

We resolved to change that. We each have some coins in our pockets now.

I find Moroccans don’t much bother with middle-men. They want to help someone, they just help. They speak to each other and help each other readily and frequently, whether they know each other or not.

Here’s another…

Why do we assume women are repressed here? Just because it is a Muslim country? Are they?

Well, the answer is complicated. Not as much as I would have thought, but…

Some observations, and I’ll let you draw your own conclusion: it seems to me that about half of women wear headscarves. It is clearly a choice here. 24% of members of parliament are women, about the same as in the U.S., AND their goal is 33%. Several high level ministers are women. Our driver, Ilyass’s wife is a physician.

At the same time, it is only relatively recently that men can no longer take a second wife unless the first one agrees, OR if she cannot bear children, OR if she hasn’t had a boy. This sounds horrifying to a liberal feminist like yours truly, but consider the economic importance in an agriculture-dependent third world country of having children.

Interesting. As always, the collective stereotype simply isn’t one-size-fits-all.

I’ll lighten up to end this post… you’re welcome 😉

Fes is a fantastic city, and the souk is just amazing. There are 150,000 different vendors and over 9,000 alleys within it. We had a guide (thank you, Abdul!) who led us to the most interesting parts and kept us from getting lost. We would literally still be there now, lost, if it weren’t for him. Fes is known especially for its leather, and it did not disappoint.

This morning, it was on to Ifrane in the middle Atlas Mountains, known as Morocco’s “little Switzerland”. It’s a bit of a resort town for people from all over Morocco, they come to enjoy the snow in the winter, and it looks as if someone picked up a European mountain town and dropped it in Morocco.

We’re now on the road to Merzouga, where we will spend the night, and then head out into the Sahara. Tomorrow night we stay in a tent (I use that term loosely. You know me and camping. This tent, I am told, even has wifi) in the desert.

We stopped about an hour ago to meet a Berber family Ilyass knows who are nomads. The father welcomed us into his very simple home, a tent with a small ventilated wood stove, carpets and cushions over the dirt floor, and a small kitchen. He introduced us to his 10 year old son and 14 year old daughter, who were polite and sweet and as welcoming as their father. He served us tea and allowed us to see his simple home, and happily explained to Ilyass that the other six families in their community would be gathering there later to listen to Morocco vs Spain on the one transistor radio they have.

Simplicity, charity, kindness.

Illumination.

Isn’t that why we travel?

I’ll be taking away more than scarves from this trip.

More after the desert, traveling friends…

Cheers!

Traveling Girl

I’ve had some pretty great luck in my travels over the years, from being in Buenos Aires when Pope Francis was announced as the new pope, to catching Eric Clapton in concert in Glasgow, but I have to say… not much compares to being in a football-crazy country during the World Cup, when said country is winning.

The last time Morocco made the round of 16 was 1986, until just a couple nights ago. We were in Casablanca for the night mostly as a stopover between Essouira and Chefchaoen, to keep that drive from being too hella long, and we arrived at our hotel just as the match was starting.

My traveling companions and I went up to our rooms to shower and get ready for dinner, and our driver went straight to the hotel bar to watch. I keep forgetting that football (soccer in the U.S.) matches are about half as long as American football games, so before I knew it, it was over and I heard horns honking and people cheering in the street below. We had dinner reservations across town, but as you can see in the video above, there was no getting anywhere in Casablanca that night.

So naturally, we went outside to join in the fun.

In the rain.

What joy!

Joy is like a magnet, I think… it just drew us outside and into the mix.

Here’s what I loved about the crowd and the scene we found: there were families out, all ages, kids on shoulders, and sure, police keeping order, but it all felt very safe. Football here, and in much of the rest of the world, is a source of national pride that it’s almost hard for an American to grasp, with all our regional rivalries. The closest we get to this sort of spirit is the Olympics, and I’d argue that even then, we’re not nearly as joyful and united as these football fans. What fun it was to witness.

The next morning it was on to Chefchaoen, the “blue city” in northern Morocco, part of the country that was once a Spanish protectorate, rather than French. We did a day of tourist things, all fun, but the REAL treat was the music we encountered at dinner that night. Read on below…

The band at the restaurant started off with American covers, and seemed generic enough, but soon a singer joined them that everyone in the place seemed to know. She was welcomed with such warmth and familiarity that we thought she might be, I don’t know, like the sister of the owner or something.

Her name is Dalal Barnoussi, and she sang in Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Moroccan Arabic. The band members are Moroccan and Andalusian.

The Israelis at the table behind us knew exactly who she was and were very excited to hear her – she has apparently sung with a symphony in Israel and is quite well known in this part of the world. My video doesn’t really do it justice, but it was such an interesting mix of cultures and music – more celebration, more joy! We absolutely loved it.

Off to Fes today, site of the oldest medina and souk in the country.

Wishing you joy, traveling friends!

Cheers

Traveling Girl

Hello from the road somewhere between Essouira and Casablanca, Morocco. It’s Thursday afternoon (had to check the day with my traveling companions, it’s one of those trips where one loses track of what day it is) – we landed in Marrakesh on Sunday, spent a day and a half there, then drove to Essouira, on the coast.

Marrakesh is a big city, chaotic and colorful and super interesting. It’s full of art and smells and colors, almost sensory overload. Essouira, in contrast, is a much smaller, slower, gentle city. It has a bit of a hippie vibe, and the history to match – Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens spent time there, along with The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Paul Simon, and Jefferson Airplane. It also has a long history of filmmaking – all the way from Orson Welles to Game of Thrones. So is it Americanized?

Not at all.

There are a ton of French in Essouira (Morocco is a former French colony in the south, and most people speak French, along with Arabic), and it’s a popular destination for European travelers. So does it have a European feel?

Sort of, but not really. Morocco, in general, is hard to pin down.

I think I expected, by way of lack of experience, a less multi-dimensional place. Morocco is a Muslim country, which for an American (such as moi) carries with it a whole host of assumptions, many of which are proving false, four days into our trip.

Yes, I am dressed more conservatively than my normal travel attire (we were advised not to show shoulders or knees), but I’m finding that it wasn’t really necessary – respectful, sure, but not mandatory. The food has been terrific (which I expected), as have the wine lists (which I did not – and turns out Moroccan wine is actually quite good). I have felt safe everywhere I’ve been so far, and while I’m grateful to be with two girlfriends and have a guide with us, I’m not feeling like that it would have been problematic not to have a guide – just more work.

I’m also finding Moroccans to be surprisingly inclusive – frankly, more so than Americans seem these days. There is an embrace of the multitudes of religions here that I would not have expected, and a pride in not just the Muslim heritage, but the Jewish and Christian histories as well. King Mohammed VI’s top advisor is a well-known Jewish diplomat named Andre Azoulay, whose daughter, Audrey Azoulay, is the Director General of UNESCO. According to our guide, the third biggest ethnic population in Israel (after European and Russian) is Moroccan, and the Moroccans seem quite proud of that statistic – it’s been quoted to us three or four times already.

And did you know that Morocco was the first country to recognize the independence of the United States in 1777? How about that.

I think it was Walt Whitman who said (some version of) “I contain multitudes”. Don’t we all. I sure do, and I detest being stereotyped. At the same time, I love having my preconceptions proven wrong when I travel, in an ooh-how-delightful-I-didn’t-expect-that sort of way and it is finally occurring to me…

Would it not be easier and more respectful to simply not have preconceptions?

Yes, I know other Muslim countries are different, stricter, less safe maybe, whatever… but again, they are different in their own way. All countries are.

Still.

Is it possible to travel with what the Buddhists call “beginner’s mind” and just take it all in as it comes? Easier said than done, I think, but worth a try.

From Casablanca we head to Chefchouen, the “blue city” then on to the Sahara. Tents in the desert and camels and all. No idea what to expect and I think I like it that way.

Wishing you more of the unexpected, traveling friends.

Cheers!

Traveling Girl

PS… I have to add, because it was so damn good.. a restaurant recommendation. Caravan Cafe in Essouira was outstanding. Order the Charcroute de Mer. Trust me.

Hello from a train midway between Oslo and Bergen, Norway. Traveling Guy and I left Oslo a couple hours ago, on our way to Flam, a small town on an inner fjord, where we’ll spend two days, then head to Voss, a short hop north, to join a Backroads tour for six days of hiking and biking and a little bit of kayaking.

As my friends know, I am active and love the outdoors, but I’m generally not so cheerful about bad weather or discomfort in general, which is why camping is not usually high on my list. As Coloradans, we have the luxury of simply waiting for good weather – with 300 + days of sunshine, you never have to wait terribly long for one.

The Norwegians, not so much.

If you plan a trip here and check the weather, you will see rain predicted nearly every day this time of year. It’s as if the weather people just sort of give up and figure it’s a good bet there will be at least SOME rain, so they just stick in in there in the long term forecast. For literally every single day.

Norwegians are a very active, nature loving group, and if they waited for a nice day, they’d never get out and do anything.

So they have a saying: “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”

Once you accept that you’re likely to get rained on at some point in the day, and you just bring an umbrella and a rain jacket, it really does remove a whole level of stress from your trip. Stop obsessively checking your weather app (which of course I did at first), just bring an umbrella and a jacket. Everywhere you go. Every time.

We were treated to a mostly lovely day yesterday, with only a few sprinkles on our bike tour, which didn’t phase us in the least because… we had rain jackets.

I’m a fan of Stoic philosophy, and one the main tenets of that school of thought (and I know I’m oversimplifying here) is to be prepared. Not in a pessimistic, always-expecting-the-worst sort of way, but in a just-be-prepared-and-you-won’t-be-shocked-when-things-don’t-go-perfectly sort of way.

Don’t cancel the bike tour and stay in your hotel room because rain is forecasted.

Just bring a damn rain jacket.

I love picking up little bits of wisdom from other cultures, and I think we could all learn a little from the Norwegians.

Carry on traveling friends. Don’t stress about what the day will bring, just bring a good jacket. Be prepared. Some rain will fall and that’s ok.

Cheers!

TG

Traveling Guy and I had an interesting conversation the other day in which I asked one of my favorite financial questions: What does money represent to you? Money, after all, is not an actual thing in itself. It is a piece of paper that we, as humans, have decided to use as our medium of exchange. We cringe at discussing it (oh, how we cringe!), but on the face of it it’s not even all that compelling a thing.

What it represents, though, now that gets more interesting. I’ve been in the financial industry for 25 years, working with individuals and families in all sorts of situations and have seen just about every dynamic around money that you might imagine.

Everyone is different here, but most answers to the representational question come down to some combination of a few things: freedom, security, safety, power, or even, in some cases, evil.

Much of the answer that we give depends on the messages we received in our families of origin. What were the messages you received about money from your parents? Was it considered a good thing? A bad thing? Something to be chased? Desired? Feared? Loathed?

Take a minute to think about that and then see if you can pinpoint what it represents to you now, as an adult. I’m a combination freedom and security gal, myself, leaning more towards freedom. Let’s call me 70/30 freedom. Traveling Guy, on the other hand, might say freedom and some combo of security and safety, but he’s 30/70 the other way.

And why does this matter?

I’d argue it affects every aspect of how you earn, attract (or repel), save, invest, and spend money, but as this is a travel blog and not (usually) a financial advice blog, I decided to write about this because I believe it massively affects how you plan for and spend money on travel. And as the market has wobbled here a bit as of late, everyone is suddenly feeling a bit more pinched, financially, than they might have felt a few months ago.

And that tends to affect how much we feel like we can spend on things like a great trip.

If you are, like me, a mostly “freedom” money person, you’ll tend to not have a problem spending money on travel, regardless of whether the market is good or bad or you’ve even looked at your 401(k) in the last 6 months. You’re also not very good at budgeting, nor do you likely go out of your way to save money. You love great hotels and business class flights. You just go for it.

I see you, my people. 😉

If you are, however, like Traveling Guy, more of a “security/safety”person, you will not only be more budget conscious on a regular basis (a good influence on me, I will wholeheartedly admit), you might really put the worrying in gear if your savings have taken a hit recently. You might even rethink or postpone a trip. (Please note that Traveling Guy would never do that, but I sure know people that would. And have.)

(“Power” people tend to spend money to keep up appearances no matter what sort of stress it creates for themselves or for anyone else. They are, in my experience anyway, a smaller percentage of people, and often unpleasant and hard to deal with, so I’m going to cheerfully leave them out of this discussion.)

And so here’s where Brene Brown comes in… all the money personality types simply need to take each other’s word for it as to how they are feeling. I’m not really going to understand you and you’re not really going to understand me. We all have a different perspective and a different history around money. No one is crazy. Or irresponsible. Or cheap. And gratefully, there are solutions to bridging the gap.

My favorite is the “Travel Account”.

As is likely obvious, I think travel is essential. It plays an extremely important role in my life, my happiness, and my overall wellbeing, so I am happy to invest in it. I transfer a set amount of money every month into my “travel account” just as I do my retirement accounts. I don’t invest this money, I don’t want it fluctuating – I just put it in very short term bond fund or money market and leave it alone. It doesn’t matter so much that it grows as just that it is THERE. Almost like a sinking fund, if you will.

Then, when a potential trip arises, I don’t even have to ask “can I afford this?” – if the money is in the Travel Account, then I can. I don’t have to care what the market did last week or if my income has gone down, because my travel account is already funded.

This has been the number one most useful mental accounting trick that I’ve suggested to clients over the years, particularly as someone is retiring and the stress of living on a fixed income is beginning to rise. If travel is a priority, treat it like one. Set aside some funds in a Travel Account.

This is important regardless of asset level, by the way. I’ve seen extremely wealthy people cancel trips when they suddenly, for whatever reason, feel like they shouldn’t spend the money on it. This is a psychological tool, not a financial one.

Hopefully we all get to travel more in 2022. While you’re planning, ask yourself what money represents to you, and, if you have a travel partner, what it represents to them. Understanding and honoring the answers will go a long way towards building a trip that makes everyone happy. And if you’ve both set aside funds in a Travel Account, all that’s left to patiently discuss is whether you pony up for that really fabulous hotel or not.

Cheers!

Traveling Girl

Taking stock. Not “stock” as in stocks and bonds and investments. Stock as in inventory.

As many of you know, I turned 50 last week. Which seems weird to me for several reasons, not the least of which is that I’m fortunate enough not to really FEEL 50, whatever that means. I feel about… I don’t know, maybe 35. Seems like a 50 year old should be more… content or something.

I am not content.

I still want more… more travels, more adventure, more love, more growth, more beauty.

More glasses of wine 🍷

So today, in my mind, I’m wandering around the warehouse of my life. Taking inventory. What used to be in this cavernous space that’s not there any more? What more is there to explore? Might there be something up on a high shelf that I haven’t even seen yet?

If you had told me when I was 20 that there were seven marathons in there, I would have told you you were crazy. And a graduate degree. And travels to other countries. But there they were. Pretty sure that marathon shelf is empty now, but I’m ok with that – I went on a 2 mile run this morning, and I’m grateful to still have the knees for it.

There were also some less glorious things – a challenging marriage early on, for instance, and some other less than ideal relationships, close to the front and on low shelves that seemed obvious.

But here’s a thought: what if we have to pull those early things off their lower shelves in order to see what’s behind them? If I had never gotten married at 26 and given it a go, would I have ever found my best friends who were waiting right on the other side of that experience? They might have sat in their section of my warehouse until another lifetime. I might not be sitting at Miraval, a spa in Arizona, right now, celebrating 50 with three of my favorite women on earth.

Would I have the new and surprising and fun and loving relationship I have now? Long time readers will note that I have never in the four years of this blog introduced a Traveling Guy, but stay tuned… 😉

Everything we pull off a shelf reveals something behind it. Time to wander around our warehouses and see what else is there.

Who knows, you may have another job or degree or trip or book to be written up on a shelf somewhere – grab yourself a stepladder and go check.

In love and adventure,

Traveling Girl

“You have excellent penmanship”, says the young woman walking by our rickety old picnic table, crowded in amongst about 15 others on the patio of a whiskey distillery in tiny Buena Vista, CO.

“Hm?”, mutters the old cowboy at the end of the table, not sure she is speaking to him. He’s clutching an old Bic pen in his leathered hand and writing what appears to be poetry in a tattered spiral notebook. His shoulder length gray hair spills out from under his brown leather hat, and the gun in the holster on his hip catches the fading light. (I kid you not, I can’t make this stuff up… he really did have a gun. This is small town Colorado, after all… it’s not all that uncommon. Those of you who have ventured beyond Denver and Boulder in CO know what I mean).

I say “our” table because I’m at the other end of it, sipping at my flight of 4 whiskeys. This is absurd for a couple of reasons. First, the idea of a “flight” of anything in this town is kind of hilarious. It’s just four shots is what it is. Also, I don’t like whiskey. But when in Rome…

“You have excellent penmanship”, she repeats.

“Oh, thanks”.

“Do you know that they don’t teach kids cursive anymore? I have a six year old, and he is only learning to print. Can you imagine? What if someone finds your notebook 50 years from now. Will they be able to read it?”

Now I’m paying attention. Seriously? They don’t teach kids cursive? The cowboy looks distressed. He looks down at his notebook. Then over at his old-fashioned, his third in the short time that I’ve been sitting there. He seems to be deciding if he’ll allow this intrusion. He decides to allow it.

“Why?”, he asks, genuinely confused.

What transpires is a short but lively conversation between three totally unconnected people, with basically nothing in common, other that the firmly held opinion that kids should be taught to write cursive. There’s me, the whiskey-tasting finance nerd from the big city, this old cowboy, and this young woman in overalls and a ponytail, easily 20 years younger than me, and probably 50 years younger than the old man.

Connection. Such an interesting thing. Sometimes ephemeral, gone like a puff of smoke. I’m back at my hotel now, and I’ll never see those two again. That’s the sort of connection that permeates travel adventures – sometimes you follow the thread and keep in contact with people you meet, and sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes connection is more tangible, though… less vaporous and more like honey, pouring over you and warming you, making you wonder where it came from all of a sudden and making you realize you were a bit chilly before and didn’t even know it. Great friendships are like this. Love is like this.

I’m off to Santa Fe tomorrow, to see some old (“old” sounds like a crazy thing to say, since I met these people all of like four months ago, but that’s how it is sometimes, isn’t it… suddenly you find yourself with new old friends) MEA friends. These are the honey people from my summer.

I only stopped in Buena Vista because it’s on the way and I’d never seen it, there was some good hiking to break up the drive, and why not. Who knew I’d get a lecture on the merits of cursive script from a drunk, gun-toting old cowboy? And who knew I’d have anything in common with him? We may disagree on second amendment issues, but I’m right there with him on the crucial issue of kids writing in cursive.

Maybe we can all look for more avenues for connection, no matter how small. I think it warms us when we can find it.

More from Santa Fe in a few days…

Cheers!

Traveling Girl

I got a super interesting email from my college roommate yesterday, and with her permission and credit (thanks, TJ!), I want to use it as the basis for today’s post. Here’s what she wrote:

“This morning I was reading the House Call section in The WSJ and it featured designer Cynthia Rowley. She is an avid traveler. Her vacation rule of thumb? ‘Never go anywhere twice’… consider that”

Oh… so many ways to go with this, and it could be applied to travel, relationships, life… do we ever really go anywhere twice? Is anyplace ever actually the same, never mind are WE ever the same?

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently in Tuscany, in Casetelfiorentino (about 19 miles outside of Florence), celebrating a friends 50th birthday. There are about 35 people here in this renovated farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside, and it’s the most eclectic and interesting group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending four days eating and drinking and dancing and conversing with… with the possible exception of the amazing humans I met at the Modern Elder Academy in Baja, but 8 of them are here, so it’s just the perfect storm of social and intellectual fun for me.

To give you an idea of the stunning beauty here, this is the view from my morning meditation and journaling spot:

Last night we went to see Andrea Bocelli perform at an amphitheater about an hour from here, and during a rain delay, he actually came out with an acoustic guitar and sang several songs – one of which was “Hallelujah”, sung together with his 10 year old daughter – THAT is a travel experience that I will never be able duplicate. So clearly, next time I come to this part of the world, and I for SURE plan to, it will be a very different experience than this one.

In general, I’d say I fall in the wanting-new-experiences-over-going-back-to-familiar-places camp, but I love this idea of an experience being new even if a location isn’t. At dinner the other night, I brought this topic up with the group and one woman I had just met had such a poetic response. She said “it’s both/and… I have an affair with travel AND I love coming back home… there are places in the world that I have loved, and when the affair with that place has ended, I can move on to others.” Another woman who has been married for 29 years absolutely craves new experiences… so, then, is perhaps what we seek in travel what we’re missing at home?

Another astute observer pointed out that avid travelers have the privilege of having the option for repeats… and therefore can recognize the nuances of coming back to a place and seeing it in a different way. When we show up somewhere new, we (hopefully) bring our “beginner’s mind”, but experience allows us to show up with more confidence and familiarity.

So what do you look for in travel? What do you crave and what itch does it scratch for you? Can we all do a better job of showing up in a new place with a beginner’s mind and allow it to wash over us and soak in and become part of us, giving us that confidence and familiarity to continue to see it in new and different ways?

Discuss, friends… and let me know what you think 😘

In love and adventure,

Traveling Girl

So… freedom. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot in the last few days as I’ve been getting ready for this trip to Italy. Primarily, I think, because I feel so FREE when I travel. But why is that? And what do I even mean by that?

So I took a little poll… I texted a bunch of my brilliant friends (it helps, when writing, to be friends with people far smarter than oneself), and asked… what is freedom? As you might imagine, answers all over the map:

Living your life at your own will.

Financial freedom: being able to spend money without that terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach.

The freedom not all of us have: the freedom from discrimination for being a person of color, a woman, or an LGBTQ+ individual.

Freedom to speak our truths, live our truths, unapologetically and without constraint, be it self-imposed or otherwise.

The ability to choose our paths, change our minds, and act.

Always having the the opportunity and ability to make choices.

Being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it – being authentic.

The ability to love oneself and others.

The ability to be/express/share our truths, who we are. No apologies or watering down needed.

Living from a place that honors our authentic selves without any internal or external blockages.

The space to let our souls soar.

Wow, that last one, eh? Let’s sit with that. (thank you, MA 😘)

I’ve had conversations with fellow travelers before about this conundrum of why traveling feels so free, whether you are alone or with others doesn’t seem to matter… and part of it for sure has to do with being free from the lives we’ve created at home. Here I sit in the Newark airport, waiting to board a flight to Rome, with a glass of wine and my iPad, and I’m literally responsible for nothing else but getting on that flight. Someone else is taking care of my dog, I checked in with my family before I left, I watered my plants, set an OOO message on my work email… So is that it? The freedom from our everyday lives? Maybe. But that can’t be the whole story. That leaves out a lot of soul soaring.

I’ll add my definition here to the respondents of my poll: I think freedom has to do with resiliency, as hinted at in my opening quote. Is it possible that the 17 year old friend of my friend’s daughter that I’m meeting in an hour to help escort her to Italy (we’re on the same flight and she’s alone so… don’t be shocked, people, but I’m the adult making sure she gets to the villa in Tuscany) doesn’t feel the same freedom that I feel? I suspect she doesn’t. First, she’s bravely launching into the TOTAL unknown, having never traveled to Europe before. Second, she’s not leaving behind a list of obligations that your average middle aged professional leaves behind when they travel. Third, she’s 17, so hopefully she hasn’t experienced quite the shit that life throws at us that requires our resiliency.

So maybe freedom is, among other things, this: bring it, life. I can take it. I’ll be me, authentically. I’ll make my choices, I’ll choose my path, I’ll love myself, express myself, speak my truth, no apologies. And if I want to have three glasses of wine in the Newark airport waiting for my flight to Rome, I will. 😊

More later, on this and so much more, my traveling friends…

In love and adventure,

Traveling Girl