I stopped to catch my breath at an overlook a few feet below
Barr camp. The clouds which once hovered above me like an unreachable dream,
now encompassed me. I was a trespasser in another world. The earth stretched
forth beneath my feet like an elaborate tapestry of lakes, towns, and trees. My eyes were no longer limited in their
reach, I could see for miles. Thunder in the distance kept time. Each passing
rumble warned with increasing urgency of a coming storm and cautioned us to
leave the mountain.
Hours later I sat alone on a stump at the foot of the
mountain. I grasped one blood-stained sock in each hand as I admired the
scrapes and scratches the mountain had left on my bare legs. All of the pain
which had eluded me on the side of the mountain now flooded my body in a single
instant. I gazed up at the mountain towering above me: Pike’s Peak, one of the
many 14’ers in the Rocky Mountain range. I almost expected time to stand still in
appreciation of the moment. But I knew it wouldn’t; it never did. Nonetheless, I knew that I would never forget
that moment. It was mine for a lifetime.
I am a collector of such moments.
Buy Experiences, Not Things
My father is a teacher, not by trade, but by nature. Growing
up, I could never escape his lessons.
Throughout my childhood, my father drove a used, two-door Toyota.
It was a distinct powder blue. We always joked that you had to wind it up in
order to make it move. Every weekend, without fail, I would see this car
sitting in our driveway waiting to be cleaned. My father would do so with great
care. In fact, based on the time and effort exerted on this weekly exercise,
one might assume my father drove a Rolls-Royce. My brother and I were often
commissioned to assist. We would meticulously clean the car’s exterior, scrub
the tires with brushes, vacuum the interior, and once all of those tasks were
completed to my father’s satisfaction, my father would bring out the little
green tub of Turtle wax. Inevitably, my brother and I would ask the obvious
question: why are we spending our weekend cleaning an old car with 200,000+
miles? My father never missed a beat, “If you don’t take care of the little you
do have, there is no reason to think that will change when you have more.”
As a teenager in a rush to get to school, I would often leave
behind a shirt or two crumpled in a pile on my bedroom floor. I could always
expect a gentle reminder, “I want you to think of that sweater as money you are
throwing on the floor. How much did that sweater cost? Would you like it to last?
If you take care of your sweater, you won’t have to buy another sweater so soon
and you can use that money for more worthwhile things.”
There was also the curious case of half-eaten bananas and
half empty water bottles that my brother and I would leave scattered around the
kitchen. Why finish the old banana when you could have a new one? Why finish a
warm water bottle when a new one waited in the fridge? And so my father would
teach us, “I want you to think of half-eaten bananas and half consumed beverages
as the equivalent of a nice meal at a restaurant, a gift you could give to a
friend, or a trip to explore a new city. These little wastes add up.”
It was a sensible notion. Time invested in caring for things now, would yield future benefits
and savings. Over time, as with most of
my father’s theories, I found this one to be completely true. As a result of my
father’s diligence, our appliances broke less often, our cars ran longer, our
houses maintained their value, and our clothes lasted beyond a season.
However, from a child’s perspective, this sensibility often
resembled frugality. My brother and I could never understand why we couldn’t
eat at restaurants as often as other families, have all of the latest and
greatest toys and gadgets, leave our clothes on the floor, and throw away
half-eaten bananas. My father’s love was never in question. We knew he would
have given us the world, and in many ways he did. To this day, we both count it
one of the great privileges of our lives to have been raised by such a man.
And yet every time we would complain about his diligence or
beg for new toys to add to our already substantial collection, he would
counter: “But I want to take you to Yellowstone this summer,” “I want you to
see the ocean,” or “I want you to try playing soccer/the violin.” My father
spent only what he had and no more. He knew that in order to afford these experiences,
certain sacrifices were required along the way. We could not have everything we
desired. His lesson was a notable one:
Where possible, buy
experiences, not things.
And so we did.
For 18 years, we invested time and money in experiences. We collected
moments. We traveled to every corner of this vast and beautiful country. We
found that spilled food outside the family tent makes for a restless night of
alleged bear sightings in the Sequoias. We learned that jokes about smuggling
children are not well received at the Canadian and Mexican borders. We re-lived
the opening scene of Gilligan’s Island on a stormy day in the Gulf of Mexico
and found ourselves alone on a small deserted island. Like my opening story, we
learned that there are very few experiences in life as rewarding as standing on
top of a mountain, hiking to the bottom of a valley, or rafting through rough
waters.
These moments are mine.
These experiences are mine.
These stories are mine.
They are my heritage. They are my inheritance. They are of
greater worth and value to me than any material possession my parents could
leave me. After all, I cannot recall a single gift from my 7th
birthday. I cannot name one wrapped toy under the Christmas tree the year I
turned ten. But I will never forget the places we saw, the people we met, the
risks we took, and the memories we made. I am an heir to my parents’ journey. As
my mother once said, “We are on a wild ride, your father and I. I married an
adventurer. You must marry an adventurer.” Herein lies another notable point:
though commitment, marriage, and family are often viewed as the enemies of
spontaneity, travel, and adventure, I have seen the two co-exist quite
beautifully.
And so the wisdom of my father continues to echo in my mind,
heart, and decisions still today:
Time spent caring for
things now will yield future benefits and savings.
Where possible, buy
experiences, not things.
It’s that familiar feeling of waking up in an unfamiliar
place: The morning sun forces your eyes open as its rays push past the curtains,
infiltrating the hotel room. In a moment somewhere between sleeping and waking,
you quickly scramble to remember where you are. A smile builds on your face as
you realize that the only task before you on this particular day is to explore
all that exists outside your window. You have no job in this city. You have no
obligations in this town.
You are a traveler.
We live in an unprecedented age of travel. Advances in
transportation and technology have increased the ease with which people are
able to travel the world, both for business and leisure. The Departures and Arrivals board at the airport is a menu of seemingly limitless
options. Even as I type, travelers are arriving in new destinations, while
others are leaving home, some for the first time. It is an endless exchange of
people and places. There is not a single moment of any day where all of the
inhabitants of the earth are on the ground at the same time. We are all constantly
moving.
If people are the moving pieces, airports remain the chess
board on which all of the pieces move from one point to the next. I must admit
that I secretly enjoy airports more than any normal person probably should. I find
them energizing. Businessmen rushing down the corridors to their terminals, a
carry-on in one hand, their cell phone in the other. It would appear as though they
spend their entire lives in the middle of a very important call. Young parents sitting
at terminals struggle to corral their children. No sooner has one child been
retrieved, than another is off and running. Retired couples, looking unusually
tan for mid-January, stroll leisurely through the food court wearing sun
dresses and floral shirts. No one needs to see their boarding passes to know
where they are going. Though I will never know the names or stories of these
individuals, I feel a certain camaraderie with my fellow travelers. We are all
on our way somewhere; and in a matter of mere hours we will all be scattered
across the world.
There are as many reasons to travel as there are travel
destinations in the world.
I find that it is primarily my love of trying new things
that keeps me on the move. The reality
is, at the end of my life when I reflect back on my journey, some of my
favorite places will be places I have not yet been; some of my favorite cities
will be cities I have not yet explored; and some of my favorite people will be
people I have not yet met.
Trying new things creates the opportunity for new favorites.
Every great passion and love was once new to us; something we tried for the
first time.
It is worth noting that trying something new does not require
the purchase of an expensive plane ticket. You do not need to leave your
backyard to see the world. A few times a month, I require myself to try
something new: to discover a new place, a new museum, a new store, or a new
restaurant; to meet a new friend or develop a new hobby. Sometimes I fulfill this challenge simply by
biking on a new path or jogging down a new street. The smallest of changes. And
yet, with each new step, I provide myself the opportunity to grow, change, and
experience the world in a new way. As the old adage goes: if you always do what
you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.
Five years ago, I decided to purchase a camera. I had no
prior interest in photography. However, I had always been an appreciator of
beauty and a few friends recommended that I make the investment. I had no idea
at the time of the purchase that something as simple as buying a camera would
change the way I viewed the world. The camera became an extension of my eyes and
memory. The more I used my camera, the more I began to notice lights, textures,
shadows, and colors in the world around me. Photography captivated me in a way very
few things have.
I remember standing on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, looking
out through my lens. A thought crossed my mind as I studied the horizon. It
would be virtually impossible to take the same photo twice. Even if I held my
camera completely still and paused only ten seconds in between shots, I would
still capture two unique images. The waves from the first photo would be a
distant memory by the time I took the second shot. Footprints and shells visible
initially would be washed away by the incoming waves. Even birds that
unknowingly made an appearance in the first image would have migrated further
down the shoreline in the course of ten seconds. That is the beauty of
photography. It captures a unique moment in time that once gone, is lost
forever. The only evidence of the moments’ existence is the photo itself.
Photography has changed me in surprising and unexpected ways. And yet it was
once completely new to me… someone else’s hobby, someone else’s passion, and
someone else’s dream…. until one day, I tried it.
And so I keep trying. I continue to travel to new places. I
continue to seek out new experiences. I am always happy to do so alone. I enjoy
my own company. However, my very favorite thing to do is to experience new things with the people in my life. There
is just something about a shared experience. I have always been told that when
hosting guests, one should prepare a familiar meal. Throwing that advice completely
out the window, I enjoy finding new recipes and experimenting when hosting
friends. The reality is, sometimes these new recipes burn or taste less than
satisfactory. Sometimes they are surprisingly delicious. But they never fail to
produce memories. Herein lies the beauty of shared memories: they are not
always perfect memories. After all, trying new things can lead to great disappointment.
But interestingly enough, oftentimes our
most difficult and disappointing memories, in time, become our favorite ones.
Time has this uncanny ability to bring out the humor in most things. Being
accused of fraud on a train in France with no ability to communicate with your
accuser is not funny at the moment; however only a few weeks later I could not get
through the story without laughing. My friends and I often sit around laughing about
the movies we saw that turned out to be terrible or the restaurants we tried
where the food was less than desirable. The joy wasn’t in the perfection of the
moment; it was in the sharing of the moment.
I daily remind myself that the greatest moments of my life
will not be moments spent on the couch or asleep. There is certainly a time for
rest and relaxation. However, the world awaits outside my doors. Some of the
most influential people in my life have only recently entered it. Some of the
most life-altering thoughts I’ve had have been sparked by books, movies,
stories, or people I encountered unexpectedly. Some of the greatest meals I’ve enjoyed have
been at places I never thought to try.
Try something new this
week. Share a new experience with someone in your life. Invest your money and
time in experiences, rather than things. Travel the world, beginning in your
own backyard.
Do all of these things
and there is no way you will leave the week the same way you entered it.
