A few weeks back Ms. K gave me 1,000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE (Patricia Schultz, Workman publishing). The title has everything in it doesn’t it? Hope, wonder, death. It also raises the big Q – how will I get to do all that?
On a quick perusal I was delighted to find out that I’ve only got 796 places left to go. Then I started reading it. It’s 974 pages long – there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before I finish the book let alone visit those other 796 places. But on page 16 of the intro I found two very useful comments…
More important than packing a bag full of money pack a bag full of patience and curiosity; allow yourself – encourage yourself – to be sidetracked and to get lost. There’s no such thing as a bad trip, just good travel stories to tell back home. Always travel with a smile and remember you’re the one with the strange customs visiting someone else’s country.
and…
As Mark Twain once said: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did.
Amen to that.
P.S. (a few days later) I’m now reading a travel book by Rick Steve. Here’s his thoughts: Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking. Travel is addictive. It can make you a happier American as well as a citizen of the world. Our earth is home to six million equally important people.
There’s two sentences there that have just sucked the air out of my self-obsessed lungs: Our earth is home to six million equally important people. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking.
If I can master all that by tea-time this will have been a good day.