Making It Happen

My family & I recently went on a three week holiday to Australia, with stop-offs in Singapore and Hong Kong. It was an ideal time to go: my daughter will be going to school in September so it's the last big holiday we can make during term-time; my son is almost two and so his airfare was cheap.

During our entire holiday, we had the same conversation with fellow passengers, hotel staff or locals that went as follows:

"Going to visit relevatives? No? Oh.....you're really brave, doing such a big trip with two little ones".

I was baffled by the number of people that held this view, so much so, that I began to ponder on the significance of their comments.

Over the years, I have noticed that I have a tendancy to sometimes enter into things without fully thinking throught the challenges that I will face. For example, I went off to live in Colombia for a year, with a Colombian family, without being able to speak a word of Spanish.

With this trip, I didn't really think about how hard it would / could be travelling for three weeks, five cities and six flights with two toddlers.

Why do I do this? To be honest,I think that the fundamental reason is that my husband and I really wanted to make this trip. We had a sense of drive that meant that we were incredibly focussed on making the most out of these three weeks.

Even if somebody had pointed out.....
- that we would have no time to ourself for three weeks;
- that we would not be able to eat healthily and at regular intervals;
- that there are hundreds of posionous insects and that we'd constantly have to keep an eye on our children;
- that the constant travelling is tiring;
....I don't think that would have stopped us.

And in the end, we had a fabulous trip. We saw so many amazing sights and we had lots of fun with our children and saw their world expand as they encountered each new experience.

What I learnt from this, is that when I really want something, it doesn't matter what the obstacles or challenges are, I can make it happen. There's a passion for the experience, a drive to seize the day that makes this obstacles part of the journey, as opposed to the end of the road.

At 6am in Hong Kong airport, I noticed a well-dressed couple in their 60s giving us a look of anxiety. As I suspected, they were on the same flight as us, and were concerned about the level of disruption our children might bring to the flight (when in fact, they were both generally well behaved, even on 13 hour flights).

The usual conversation cropped up. But this time when they told us how brave we were, I replied, "If you really want to do something......".

They nodded with sage understanding.