If You Want To Go Travelling, Do It Now

If you have a yearning to go travelling, don’t procrastinate – start planning now for how you can make your travel dreams come true and enjoy your life to the full

Yesterday I attended the funeral of my friend Tik, the wife of Rob, one of my best mates here in Thailand. The three of us were going to be business partners in a new scuba diving company. I won’t mention anymore about the funeral here, but you can imagine it’s caused me and many of my friends to reflect on our own lives and put things into perspective. The thought that I keep coming back to is that life is random and precarious, even when you think it isn’t – and everything can change in an instant. So it’s important to work out what you really want from life and go for it, and not get sucked into worrying about money, careers, houses or any of that other stuff that people often feel means they do not have the freedom to go travelling (or pursue whatever other dream they may have). As my dad has often said to me, “There is no such thing as security”. You cannot anticipate or control all the things that life will throw at you. All you can do is try and stick some money in the bank to deal with emergencies and then press on with what it is you really want to do.

For me, travelling is what redefined my life when I left the UK in 2002. It’s what led me to discover my passion – scuba diving – and to find a new sense of wonder about the world and the people in it. It’s only through backpacking that I managed to do that, not just by physically travelling to these new places and experiencing them, but also because I was away from the grind of work and finally had almost unlimited time to think about what I wanted to do in life and think about what was around me.

Today, thinking about Tik, I feel sad for all the plans she had that we won’t get to see come true now. But she did a lot in her life and her 3 years together with Rob were the happiest of their lives. If Rob hadn’t gone travelling, he would have never have met Tik – or me, for that matter. Even though this is the saddest time, there is a lot to be thankful for, and Tik would want all of her friends to do what they really want to do, just like she did.

So, if you want to go travelling, do it now. Start planning it today and aim to get there by the end of the year, wherever it is – because you never know what might happen next, for good or bad.

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