In our lives we experience cycles from the excitement of
youth seeking happiness to the wisdom of age searching for purpose, so how does
this relate to a road trip? I feel like a vacation is a small snapshot of our
lives and the emotions and feelings we get mimic, on a small scale, how life
changes and develops over time.
When we are planning for the trip, there is the feeling of
hope and excitement. As in youth, we tend to dream big and create this amazing fantasy
where even a short period of time will make up for all the time we worked hard
to afford the costs of the trip. We make plans, we add places to the vacation
and activities that don’t necessarily coincide with the actual reality of time
or the lack there of.
I feel like half the fun of traveling is the planning, learning
about new places and making reservations is all part of the experience. I like
the anticipation almost as much as the actual experience. As time passes in the
planning process we start to realize the costs and the reality that we have
probably allotted enough money for half the experiences and have arranged two
weeks of adventures into a weeks worth of time.
So goes youth, we grow into our lives, the realities we
redefine and the truth that we learn as we get closer to the actual life we
have planned. This is why the teen years are so turbulent, it’s like planning
to dive off a ten-foot diving board only to realize it is a cliff that is one
hundred foot above treacherous rocks. This is the point in the vacation where
you get out on the road and all the questions start to occur; did I forget
anything? Did I bring enough cash? Have I planned too much? There is an excitement
at this point but there is still that feeling of stress as the miles pass by
and we get further and further away from our safe and stable lives.
When we arrive at our destination there is a mix of panic,
the flat tire, running out of gas, the credit card that gets declined or the
hotel that has misplaced our reservation, it always seems that in the midst of
the road trip something goes wrong. We are at the mercy of the road, we feel
our lack of planning and the truth of the vacation we have planned, we start to
adjust the time we spend, what we are able to do and what we need to plan for
another trip. This is life and the reality of the path we chose, both the peaks
and the valleys. This time I would equate with our post graduation and the
experience we have with building our careers and raising our families, it is as
frightening and stressful as it is filled with passion and fulfillment.
With age, we realize the actual truth of the road trip; it’s
reliving the points of time, the restaurants you’ve been to and the things
you’ve seen. Suddenly the fears and insecurities of being out on the road turn
into the confidence of miles driven. I experience a clarity of mind, routine
loses its weight on what seems possible, even as the vacation ends you are
planning the next place to go, to experience life, the great highs and the
insecurities of the lows. The ride home is the wisdom of looking back on our
lives and realizing what we have accomplished and perhaps what we might have
changed if given the chance.
In the final miles, we long for the routine we worked so
hard to get away from and miss the pets we left or the comfortable beds we’ve
abandoned. It is a feeling of full circle and yet at the same time whether it
be sadness and regret or fulfillment and passion we have made our trip what it
was but unlike our lives we can go and do it all over again the next time we
have a chance to road trip.
