In about a year's time me and my girlfriend will be leaving these shores for a 'sabbatical', a year long trip into the void that is the world, to gain new experiences, new friends and new memories that will last us a lifetime and hopefully keep us content till we are trapped in the mundanity of old age and ill health. This trip though is not something we have decided to do on a whim oh no. It has been talked about, fantasized about and mulled over for the best part of our relationship from the latter stages of university, to training and starting new jobs and the years spent in-between. For me this is the dream, the chance to experience something a lot of people say they would like to do but never get round to doing it, or get so stuck into the tedious inevitability of routine that the thought of taking a risk and getting out of all that for a while seems overwhelmingly daunting. I don't blame them; going on a trip of this magnitude has its risks, not least the fact that leaving our jobs could be deemed irresponsible! I kind of agree but look at it this way, we are saving the money up ourselves, meaning that although we will be pretty penniless and unemployed at least we won't have the immediate comedown of a mountain of debt to scale upon our return! In addition to this, why do we have to be constrained by economics!? What a sad life we would lead if something you have planned for so very long could no longer be achievable due to a recession or an over eager Tory hell bent on massive public-sector cuts! We have no responsibilities, no ties that won't be there on our return, and a feeling that if we don't do it now then unfortunately it may never happen.
Now ever since I can remember I have had this infatuation with places, place names and where they are in the world. I can trace this all back to when I used to go round to my grandma's house after school on a Monday afternoon where she would make me two crumpets smothered in butter and a sweet milky tea. She would sit me on her knee and pull out what I thought was the most famous atlas in the world due to its sheer size and sense of importance. We would sit flicking the pages looking intently at all the countries of the world with their river systems, mountain ranges, secluded bays and obvious desolation. It was this sense of wonder, of infinite possibility that got me wondering and the excitement grew through the years until I was school and could beat anyone at the capital city game, giving the geography teachers a run for their money with Nicaragua and Uzbekistan!
Losing my brother three years ago to cancer definitely put things into perspective. Although never holding massive ambitions to travel the world his death served as a mental warning, maybe that I was now aware of my own mortality and that life was just too precious to be sat watching TV or just idling along spending your best years wishing it away. Life has now become very pressurised but at least it has served to point me in what I believe is the right direction. This trip for me, rightly or wrongly, is all I want to do, all I have ever wanted to do. Whilst others were dreaming of careers and making money, all I have ever wanted to do is see the world and meet as many nice people as possible, call it daft, call it irresponsible, call it what you like, in a world full of overused clichés, we have one life....MAKE THE MOST OF IT!
