Should She Go to India . . .

                    Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.            

                                            —  Helen Keller

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

          — Yogi Berra

Some time ago a woman wrote to one of the advice columnists in the newspaper. She had been given some money from her parents —  who wanted her put the money toward her retirement savings. The question she was asking the columnist was if it would be alright to instead use the money to fulfill a dream. This woman always had wanted to go to India, but her income had not been sufficient for her to save enough money go.

Responses from readers were fascinating. Usually when an emotional question elicits a lot of responses from readers, a few are printed — and then the column moves on from there. In this case readers have continued to respond to the question of whether the woman should use the money to go to India.

One group of people believes the woman would be foolish to use this small windfall. The most recent response suggested the woman could perhaps experience the essence of India without leaving home. And that the woman would come to regret using the money for travel and then find herself unable to retire at age seventy.

A second group of readers says “go for it, woman!” They see the money as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And that the woman will have all of these memories of her experience to savor in her later years. One person did the math and computed the number of years the woman would have in order to adequately fund her retirement —  and still use this unexpected money to fulfill her dream.

The columnist said it was interesting that all the people who advised the woman to stay home had never traveled themselves.

It was this statement that caught my eye. It would seem the original question divided people into those who travel and believe that travel has a value far beyond the dollars invested. Those people with a more conservative perspective valued opportunities to protect their security, especially during the elder years.

As Ben Franklin says:

We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour

each day making choices . . .

Each choice is made in the context of whatever

value system we have selcted to govern our lives

The illusion that we control our lives is just that —  an illusion. The reality is that all of life is filled with unexpected circumstances. Even so, we alternate between periods in which we believe our decisions give us security and times when our lives are turned upside down.

Our best decision-making strategy needs to recognize we can not control the universe! There is a fine balance between the wisdom of caution and daring to take advantage of opportunities that walk right into our lives. A lost job, a death of a loved one, betrayal by someone we trusted, economic turmoil affecting our retirement plans, or a catastrophic loss to our home —  the list is long.

We can use hold those circumstances close to our hearts and try to devise lives that protect us from future events. Or we can acknowledge that we do not get to save ourselves. And turn our losses into opportunities. Even as we may grieve what has been handed us.

Should she travel to India, this woman with a dream? Some people do not want to risk leaving the comforts of home in order to travel. I certainly can testify that traveling is not for the faint-hearted! We may sleep in beds that do not comfort our bodies. Strange food confronts us. The prospect of trauma from difficulties that we may encounter is always a risk. Culture shock is real —  both in going to new places as well as coming home from such places.

However, I would not have traded any travel-experiences I have had for the security of my familiar home. Travel has formed and transformed me in ways I could never have imagined.

I think of some of those events. Last April we set sail for Japan and the north Pacific only to encounter sea ice driven south from the high Arctic. When the ice floes became so frequent that our ship could not pass through, our ship had to return to Japan to find another route to Alaska. I had the experience of a lifetime because it is not likely I will ever travel by ship through the Arctic that lies above Canada.

A trip to Bangkok was on hold until just weeks before —  due to protests in the streets. In the current news, we watch street protests in Athens happening in the square in front of the Parliament building - just outside our hotel window where we stayed several years earlier. 

A window between violence in Kenya gave me another experience of  high adventure in Africa. There I watched a female lion drive her adolescent son out of the pride because it was time he made a life of his own. Three male lions with big manes watched the whole drama along with us.

Crossing the north Atlantic, we sailing through rough seas with forty foot waves — and then hid out from Hurricane Earl as it moved north and we sailed south. We were just 100 miles from its eye. Or being unable to make landing in the Falkland Islands, when fog was so thick you could not see your hand in front of your face. The twenty-foot waves would have made the two-mile trip to the main island (in the equivalent of a lifeboat) unwise and a bit too much.

Not all of my travel experiences have been those of high adventure. The wonder of being in places that once were only dreams. Conversations in cafes with folks at the next table and wandering cities like Paris and London. Watch a wedding procession while sitting at a sidewalk café in Seville and sharing vicariously in the celebration with all the guests, bride and groom. And matriarch of the family brought up the rear in grand style, a woman about 4 foot 6 with a magnificent mantilla upon her head that must have been at least a foot tall.

Or being part of history in the making. Being in what was Eastern Germany a year after reunification. And hearing stories of people in Northern Ireland about what the Troubles had meant to them.

Some of my collection of memories were camping high in the mountains and eating the gift of a neighbor’s just-caught trout. There were the important times that we shared with our children as they grew up. Memories now embedded in my bones of the beauty of high mountain passes, blooming deserts, red rock canyons, and endless solitary ocean beaches.

If we had saved “all that money” we spent on travel, we certainly now would be living a grand life of ease. Stock markets gyrations and the politics of sequester and fiscal cliffs in Washington would be much less of cause for concern. But we would have the same issues of health that all of us face as we age - ours and friends. We would still face the likelihood that one of us will die before the other. And I noticed that a freak hailstorm this November that meant a new roof did not discriminate among the residents of our neighborhood! 

To the woman who dreams of India I would say go for it! And not just because traveling to India is one of the places I have not yet figured out how to make happen in my own life.

Our dreams can sometimes become realities in such unexpected ways.