From when I was seven years old, my parents took us every year to Spain for our summer vacations. Each year we made an 800 to 1000 miles trip from the Netherlands where I grew up to the land of paella and flamingo. Now you have the think about this... the roads were not so nice as they are now... we had no GPS... we had to travel through two different countries to get in Spain... we didn't speak any of the languages of the countries we went to; and there was very little information about the route to take or our journey's end; the trip in the car took us three nights and days. This was a big adventure every year.
My dad always said: our vacation starts the moment we close the door behind us and get in the car. We never rushed during our travel to our destinations and when we stopped to rest, we took our time to look around, play, eat and explore. Sitting on the back seat of our car I enjoyed when we drove through endless new sceneries: mountains, lakes, farm land, cities, villages. We got to eat all these new foods from the places we went through and we met people from all over Europe.
This was way before I knew about the 19th century essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson and his famous quote: "Life is a journey not a destination". I learned from our summer vacations how much truth there is in this saying. It was all because my parents made sure that the journey was at least as enjoyable as our destination.
Life is exactly like that... enjoy every mile on the way to your destiny... and if you take a wrong turn do what my dad always said: enjoy the view.
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"Be inspired and you shall inspire." ~ JD
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