Day 26: You Only Live Once (YOLO) - My travel adventures
6 years have passed since the day I embarked on my exchange to Sweden. Recently, I left my job and hence I was given a lot of time to think about what I want to do next. I was chatting with lil sister about how my fast time has whizzed past me in the past 4 years. Although I have been constantly travelling in the past 4 years, certain memories from Europe linger on. Recently, a few events that happened made me walk down memory lane and led me to think about how much I have changed in the last four years.
Firstly, an occasional conversation with a relative who will be heading to Munich in August made me decided to look at my old blog posts to give him some recommendations on the places to visit. This walk down memory lane certainly stirred up emotions in me and I find it a waste that I did not keep to my own promise to blog about all the places that I travel to e.g. USA, Canada, etc. So I told myself that when I am back from my next adventure i.e. Australia and I have some time off, I shall try to recall as much as possible about the places that I have been to and write about them.
Secondly, I happened to chance upon an ex-student's Facebook to discover that she embarked on a 33-day journey to Europe travelling to places such as Turkey, Hungary, Czech, Germany, UK, and Iceland. The way she described her adventures was a mirror of the younger me. Though I was a poor student back then, I had a lot of fun on my travels meeting new people, some whom I will probably never meet again, others whom I had met on previous adventures, and of course some whom I subsequently met up with again. However, I always enjoyed meeting these strangers and engage in conversations about anything under the sun. Now that I have aged and been through the washes of the working society, I realise that I am no longer the traveller I used to be, the one who is always willing to meet new people. Perhaps because I know that 80% of these people are those that I will never meet again, or that I am sick of explaining all about my job, or why I was in a particular location, or that while I am travelling, I just want to enjoy the peace and tranquility of the surroundings. I guess wisdom and maturity come with a price as well and that is innocence. No one can say the older or the newer me is the better one because you only do certain things when you are young and I am glad I did experience those emotions when I was young. Not that I don't enjoy meeting new people these days, but I definitely am more reserved and less proactive in making new friends. For example, when I see a new colleague, I will say 'HI' and acknowledge his or her presence but no longer asking probing questions or whatsoever.
As I am writing about all these thrills of a young adult, I recall this meaningful saying that I came across a few years back: "When you are young, you have energy and time but you do not have money. When you are a working adult, you have money and energy but you do not have time. When you are old, you have money and time but you no longer have the energy." At every stage in your life, something will be lacking and hence the best way to get out of this is to always find the thing that you are lacking or make the best out of what you have. When you are young, try to travel on a budget since your pockets are not deep enough. When you are at adulthood, try to take a break from work and make time for the world. When you are old, make sure that you have been maintaining a healthy lifestyle since young so that you will still have the energy to spend time with the world.
Thirdly, all these friends that I have made in my previous working place and also friends from my schooling days are like lighthouses or maybe like Leonardo di Carpio in Inception. They plant ideas in me but they make me happy unknowingly. A proposal to go to Hokkaido, an occasional mention of a visit to Turkey, an invitation to view the Northern lights and I have decided to once again embark on my travel adventures in these 6 months that I am taking a break from. Remember, to make time while I still have energy and some $$.
People, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. Not that we should make use of this saying to do evil things, to be impulse and make rash decisions but we should really live everyday to the fullest and this saying is like an occasional knock on the head for me to not think too much about risks, about $$, about any other commitments. All the events that have been happening around the world in the last 2-3 years should have knocked some sense into everyone of us - to cherish the people around us, to love them, to learn to forgive and cast aside sayings such as 'An eye for an eye' or 'Revenge is best served cold'.
#Pray for the peace of Jerusalem #Pray for MH17 & MH370 #Pray for the kids of Gaza and Syria
How many more of such hashtags do we need to create?
