Why we’re going

If there’s something you really, really want to do, and you have the ability to do it, you’re a fool not to.

It took a while to realize that.  The societal pressure to live a standard life is pretty strong.  The FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) of violating the norms is huge, especially if your overall life plan is fairly conventional and you’re well on your way.  Add kids, and you have the responsibility of not screwing up several people’s lives.

But even with the conventional life, there are no guarantees that you’ll ever get to the fun stuff after you finish your chores.  My mother and grandfather both died in their early 60s.  A handful of dads in our elementary school community have died over the last few years.  Life-altering surprises can pop up at any minute.  And then I was innocently reading one of the RTW family blogs when it ended with the death of the mother a year after they returned.  I was overwhelmed with the value of this family having had that year together.  Taking this trip was now imperative.

My entry to early Midlife was also a contributing factor, manifested in the gap in my checklist: Get a PhD, Get a job, Get married, Get a house, Have Kids… Retire.  Even an early retirement (still aiming for 54!) leaves a lot of time with no boxes to check, and planning for post career adventures wears thin after a while (see above paragraph.)

The resiliency of children

And that time, those decades, are filled with endless administrivia.  Ordering lunches before the deadline, signing up for all the activities, driving an endless loop back and forth across the county for every sport, activity, supplementary school, camp, and enriching opportunity that is absolutely necessary for raising successful kids, shoveling the sidewalk again after the plow comes again to avoid another ticket from the town again, to-do lists of to-do lists… and still most of my hours spent on the internet avoiding it all.  Imagine a year free from all of life’s obligations, a year UnbeHolden.

And if we were really going to go as a family, the window for doing it without negatively impacting the kids (see FUD) is closing.  We don’t want to mess with E’s high school years (the conventional path served us pretty well, after all) and we needed A to be old enough to remember the trip (and carry his own weight).  Since they are 4 years apart, that doesn’t leave much wiggle room.  It seemed remarkable at first that so many of the RTW family blogs have kids within a year of our kids’ ages, but it’s no accident.

Making friends in Guatemala

We also have to recognize our extreme privilege, and I think we have a responsibility not to squander it.  We – most of us – are the richest people in human history.  We have heat and air conditioning, we have ridiculous amounts and variety of food, we have the ability to travel to the remotest corners of the planet in a few days if we choose.  We have more, and more flexibility, than royalty and emperors did less than 100 years ago.  But what’s the point if life is still a slog, counting down the decades until retirement?  It becomes a moral issue when you recognize that our luxury is based on a global economic system built on the exploitation of so much of the world’s population and resources: if we’re participants in trashing the world for our comfort, we have a responsibility to enjoy it.  For that matter, what was the point of my parents working multiple jobs so I could graduate college without debt, if I never exercise the freedom of that gift?

Why? Moments like these, in Cappadocia, Turkey

But fundamentally, we’re not going because of the fear of losing the opportunity or of squandering our birthright.  We’re going because it’s going to be awesome.  Because I spend time between trips lusting after the immersion in the sounds of languages I don’t understand, the flavors of foods I can’t guess how to cook, the hyperawareness of navigating unfamiliar transportation systems.  I crave the satisfaction of coloring in blank sections of my mental map of the world, filling them with memories of markets and mountains, dusty bus lots and meals purchased through open train windows.

And because we’ll be doing it together, without the external demands that are always pulling us apart.  A year with our kids, a year with each other, a year as a family.  That’s why we had them in the first place, and right now that’s the best gift I can give them.