A Letter To My Bucket List
As I approach my thirties, I find myself thinking more often about time and how important it really is. This indefinite continued progress of existence and events that are broken down in past, present, and future but often regarded to as a whole. This invisible thing that we are told we have but can never change or alter.
We can only control what we do with the time we are given. It’s one of the only things in our life that we are not able to earn more of or have to pay back. It’s simply fact. I can’t count how many times I’ve been told as a younger individual when speaking about time and life,
“Oh don’t worry, you have tons of time left to do the things you want to do.”
This is quite presumptuous. The fact that we think about time as a guaranteed fact in our lifespan is naïve and silly. There is no way to measure how much time we have left on this Earth so why is our society so calm about wasting it?
My parents used to tell me that I was young and not to worry about time. They would reassure me that I had tons of it. I believed that actually thought this until a recent conversation I had with my mother. We were driving to enjoy a day in the mountains and she said, “I wish I would have seen South America.” She is convinced now that she is too old to visit and she would feel guilty leaving my father since he wouldn’t want to travel there in his seventies.
She is going to end her life without ever seeing a place she has dreamt of seeing since she was child. She told me more about the dreams she had and the goals
she didn’t have time to attain between being a mother, full-time employee and wife. As she spoke her green eyes glazed over and she left the vehicle mentally for about 2-minutes. I felt like she was going through her life year by year searching, wondering and trying to find answers to her questions. She had one big question on her mind, “Why didn’t I ever go?”
You see, the time goes fast. The days may seem long but the years are incredibly short. It baffles me when I think about how I’m coming up on my thirtieth birthday. I have five months left of my twenties and then they are over. I’ll never be twenty-something again. It’s a frightening thought. I always thought
I would have done more by now.
I thought I’d be a mother, have my degree, written a book, be married, lived more places, travelled more, have more money in my savings but the time goes by fast and before you know it you’ve only achieved half the things you planned on doing.
My mindset has shifted in the last two years. I was taught that if I worked hard on my career and my home life that I would be happy and fulfilled. I’m good at listening to instructions so that’s exactly what I did. I kept working hard even on the days that felt impossible but I never felt happy. I assumed it would just happen one day, that it would appear out of thin air but it never did. I kept scrambling and digging for that happiness but I found out I was building empires in the wrong areas of my life. I was putting aside everything that I put value in and trying to please the people around me instead.
The most important thing I’ve learned in these two years of soul searching is that you will never find happiness when you are looking outward. It’s not out there. Happiness is found within you. You need to know what you need and desire. If you’re waiting for someone else to give you permission to do the things you wish to accomplish in your life than you’re going to be waiting a very long time.
Since I was a child, I knew I wanted to see the world. I used to lay in my bed and dream about what the sand in Hawaii would feel like between my toes, how the crepes would taste in Paris and the how electric the energy would feel when the New Year’s Eve ball drops in Time Square.
I keep telling myself that I can always make more money and I will always have the opportunity to finishmy degree. Those are things that I can do over time and they will eventually get completed. What I don’t know is how much time I actually have left on this Earth. I don’t want to say goodbye to my life knowing that there was so much more I wanted and deserved to see. I know that I won’t regret not finishing my degree but I do know I’ll regret never seeing that ball drop or hiking the Moanalua Valley Trail in Oahu.
That is why I’m dedicating time to creating trip itineraries to people’s dream destinations. This will make it easier for people to take those big travel dreams and make it their reality.
This takes the stress away when booking travel to places like Iceland, European countries, Indonesia and South America because everything is taken care of except for your flights.
How easy is that!
In order to curate the best trips possible, I want to hear from you! In the next 5 minutes, I want you to fill out this survey and spend time writing down your travel dreams on this free download and put it somewhere as a reminder of what you’re living for!
I’ve also created a few resources to get you going! For some of my outdoor essentials click here, and for some of my favourite snacks visit this blog post!
