Preparing to Surrender to the Journey

I have a memory of my grandparents visiting before they had to go to the airport. I can't remember if they themselves were going somewhere or if they were dropping someone off, but my grandfather had himself all worked up and in a sweat. He didn't want to miss the flight.

I am the person who usually shows up early, not because I want to be punctual, but because I assume something will go wrong during the journey (usually fears of getting lost) so I give myself plenty of time to make course changes. Much is said in praise of the journey being of equal importance, of not more, as the destination. Even though as a child my favorite game was "explorers," I much prefer the destination. I tend to avoid the journey part. Like my grandfather, it gives me nervous sweats. I can appreciate that "Life is a journey, not a destination," when applied to the overall course of one's lifetime, but not so much when applied to actual, physical travel.

Planes, trains and automobiles. I'd walk everywhere if I could. I don't like giving up control to the system of designated routes, transfers, connections, departures and arrivals. Too much can go wrong! And it does. I've been that person running from one end of the airport to the other as I hear my name called on the speaker telling me that my gate will be closing in 5 minutes. As if I wasn't well aware! I'm the paranoid one frantically rechecking my ticket, worried that I'm waiting at the wrong gate even though the gate number, departure time and destination city clearly match what's on my ticket.

And that is one reason why I will be traveling to Frankfurt, Germany and on to Paris and Lyon in France, the Alps, Italy and who knows where else for two months starting in June. My first time overseas. My first time really travelling. And, yes, I am terribly worried about taking the train from Germany to Paris and so on. I have to remind myself that I don’t need to know what exactly to do for any given situation; I can't preplan every contingency. I have to learn to trust that I will be able to do something. Taking this opportunity to finally travel is about finding confidence in my intuition and instincts to think on my feet . . . and survive! It is part of the adventure. Besides, one missed connection back home due to weather and with no empty seats for two days lead to a marvellous weekend exploring Manhattan . . . mostly on foot.

Now that that's out of the way, I can start worrying about how much all this is going to costJ.