The 6 ½ hour plane ride from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo for the
last leg of our trip – one week in Japan – seems like a good time to reflect a
bit on our travels. We’ve been on the
road for eight months, both a long time and not such a long time. It’s a long time in the sense of a
conventional trip abroad, which in these days might be two weeks, if you’re
lucky. It’s a long time for a family to
spend every moment of every day together. It’s not that long in the space of a
lifetime…it’s not even one school year.
It has been the trip of a lifetime – I get tired just thinking
about everything we’ve seen and done – snow-capped volcanoes, empty prairies, inviting
beaches, dense jungles, ancient ruins, blazing deserts, tropical islands,
enough wild animals to fill hundreds of zoos, cities ranging from quaint to
futuristic to scary. Places with no
people at all, and the most crowded places there are. Environments ranging from freezing to
scorching, parched to sweaty. Lots of
beauty and a fair bit of ugliness. I may
leave this trip with the concern that we won’t be able to remember, let alone
process, everything we’ve seen, but I’ll have absolutely no regrets that we
didn’t see or do enough.
We’re all tired, looking forward to being home, and I’m
pretty sure we are all approaching our week in Japan with mixed feelings –
we’re all excited to see a place unlike any we’ve be to, the birthplace of
videogames, hello kitty and ramen. On
the other hand, it’s hard not to think of the next week as one last ordeal we
have to get through before we finally get back home. It seems inevitable on a trip of almost any
length, that the last portion is spent more focused on the homecoming than the
present.
I had three objectives in taking this trip. The first was that I wanted to expose O&R
to what they will not see in Brooklyn, to avoid the particular provincialism
that afflicts those who really do live at the center of the world – they need
to know that the planet is a big place.
The second was that I, perhaps a bit selfishly, wanted to a big
chunk of concentrated time with my children before they leave childhood behind
forever. I’ve always been suspicious of
the notion of “quality time.” I wanted
quantity, and I haven’t always gotten that.
The third objective was more personal – I wanted to put some
time and distance between me and my day-to-day life to assess where I was, and
reflect on how I want to live going forward.
I never felt like I was using travel to run away from anything, but I
did want to do a gut check to make sure I was heading in the right direction.
Missions accomplished, I think. And I’ve learned more than a few things about
myself, and about my family that weren’t on the list.
We’ve set the stage for O&R to become worldly, in every
sense of the word; what they do with it in the future is really going to be up
to them. (That’s one of the lessons I’ve
learned.)
Meeting the second objective of more time together was easy
– we’ve gotten this far, and even if it hasn’t always been pretty, we’re
definitely all closer than we have ever been.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this affects us in the years ahead.
And even though we’ve been consumed by our interactions with
all the places we’ve been, I’ve definitely had time to reflect. And it’s renewed my energy and enthusiasm for
work, family and life. I’m ready for one
more big week in Japan, then I’ll want to go home.
No comments:
Post a Comment