As wonderful as vacations are they are typically made better when something almost happens. “We almost missed the plane” or “We almost got into a car accident” or “We almost missed the show because we hopped off the wrong exit”.
If it’s easy it’s usually not memorable or appreciated. If you woke up, grabbed a bag that was packed the night before, neatly packed the night before by the way, arrived at the airport 2 hours early, had a flawless flight, got the rental car you wanted, and easily checked into the hotel, you’d be scared as hell.
You’d be looking over your shoulder the whole time waiting for some shitty, inconvenient thing to happen. It’s not that anyone wants that shitty, inconvenient thing to happen, it’s that the shitty inconvenient thing happening early allows you to take a deep breath and enjoy the rest of your time.
How many times have you gotten to your destination and said some variation of “It’s about got damn time!” and collapsed on the bed or in the biggest comfy cozy chair you could find? The struggle to get to the destination allows you to appreciate the destination.
Sometimes it allows you to find out who you really want to hang out with when you are at that destination. How many times, when you were younger, did a relationship or a friendship end when you actually took time to travel with that person? You can date for six months to a year and slowly find out things about someone OR you can go on a problematic trip and see how someone reacts when things get real.
How sexy is that person when they accidentally miss the exit and you really need to use the bathroom? What type of terrible things come out of their mouth or your mouth after you’ve been awake for 2 days straight only to get to the wrong location?
As great as it would be to get somewhere without issue and without problems or without struggle, how can we appreciate the highs without knowing the lows?
I remember winning a trip for work. It was out of the blue. It should have been great. But due to an impending storm I had to take an earlier flight. I missed my connecting flight because I was unfamiliar with Chicago O’Hare Airport and our escort didn’t show up on time.
Luckily the agent took pity on me (the escort who picked us up 30 minutes late also stepped up) and put me on the next flight to the destination. It rained sheets of rain for the first two days. Finally on the third day the storm broke. You could see the ocean from the balcony.
The sunlight glistened off the rain soaked trees. The air was clean. By mid afternoon everything was dry and looked new. The forecast for the next 3 days was sunny and 72°.
By 4:30 I walked on to the balcony, inhaled deep, dropped my shoulders, collapsed into the biggest comfy cozy chair on the patio and declared, “It’s about got damned time!”.
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