VACATIONS

     Vacations are hard work. We plan them and rearrange our lives. Then we pack and travel. Once arrived and settled, we search out our best food choices, and adjust the best we can to unfamiliar beds and pillows, and the reality of our experience as it stands up against our expectations. The weather, traffic, sickness, the wrong clothes, the attitudes of our traveling companions: all of these things are wild cards.
     And then, when it's all over, we have to travel home... and unpack, and do loads of laundry, and re-group. We have to prepare to return to our lives, and work, and the next thing, and the next, with our trip now behind us. And what's interesting, and never ceases to amaze me, is the simple reality that no matter what kind of time we had, it becomes nostalgic. The adventure becomes a "classic" in our lives, even if it was nothing but hardship. And we smile every time we remember it... just knowing that we made it through.

Let's live our lives like we live our vacations, with a willingness to experience whatever comes, knowing that whatever happens, or doesn't happen, it will grow us in the end.