There is Time Enough for Everything

So it’s sort of that time of year when we are normally taking an extended holiday in Europe; something that we usually start planning for after all of the excitement of Christmas and the holidays have worn off. And typically without hesitation, I have a few ideas up my sleeve about where we should travel to.

It’s sort of like my subconscious creates these visions of exactly what we should be doing – a week of school in Italy, Provence to see the lavender, Mykonos to walk in my Dad’s footsteps, Capri to swim in the blue grotto, Naples for a pizza from that place (the place that I read about in Eat, Pray, Love so many years ago), Paris in the Fall, or even Nice to drink rosé on the beach. Yep, somehow without much thought at all, I have the most romantic visions of different destinations floating around in my head.

But somehow when we crossed into the New Year this year, I actually found myself in a place that I had never been before. . .I had no direction, no visions, and no ideas. January passed into February, to March, April, and now May. . .and our conversations have pretty much been the same: “what should we do? Where should we go? We really need to decide. . .”

At first my indecision came from the feeling of, “well. . .I’d sort of like to go everywhere. . .so how many places can we possibly cram in?” I even went to our public library and brought home approximately 38 travel books for everywhere in the world that I could possibly ever want to go to in my lifetime – Scotland, England, Morocco, the Maldives, Ireland, Spain, France, Norway, Sweden, Brussels, Russia – I really mean everywhere.

It took us months to even start to narrow things down. And the whole time I kept feeling like, “is this the right choice? Should we go somewhere else? Maybe we should just go back to the same places that we already love so much? WHAT IS THE RIGHT CHOICE???” And that’s when it sort of hit me. I was trying to force the situation.

So I started repeating this mantra to myself: there is time enough for everything. Just because you want to go everywhere in the world, and you want to experience it all, you don’t need to do it all right now. There is time enough for everything. And just because you have been doing an extended holiday in Europe for several years now, does not mean that you need to do one this year. The right thing always happens. There is time enough for everything.

For me, it is important not to travel just to travel. . .but to travel and experience something because I have a feeling about it, and an idea, and a great desire. And the fact that I really didn’t have my heart set on anything this Spring? Well, that’s perfectly fine. Because really, there is time enough for everything. And someday I will definitely see the whole world.