The Less Travelled Road

I remember, vividly, touching down in Switzerland on our way back from Greece in 2015 and thinking, “ok, yeah I could keep going. I could get out of the plane and check out Switzerland for a while”.

This dream of traveling the world was one that Melissa shared more with my father than with me, initially, if I’m being honest. Sure, I loved our vacations, but I just as much loved returning home. Of mowing our overgrown lawn upon return, and of settling back into the familiar. The familiar routine of work, nights out in our neighborhood, ordering sushi from our favorite local restaurant, of visiting with friends on the weekends and enjoying the backyard of our Victorian house in Denver. But the touch down in Switzerland was a turning point. My mind opened up to different realities and a different life.

A lot has happened since that landing. We took the plunge. We left our lucrative and stable, well paying yet predictable jobs. We sold that house with the beloved back yard. We bought an apartment in Portugal. We had doubts. We persevered. We moved in and experienced the challenges of moving to a foreign land with the inability to speak the foreign language. COVID struck the world and knocked us all down a peg or two. We learned Portuguese via Skype for three years. The world opened back up. We, cautiously, returned to Portugal and then to travel, masks in hand and on faces.

When I first met Melissa, she talked about wanting to live in Paris one day, even if only for a few months. I nodded in full agreement with the idea but inside I thought, “you crazy”. Oh, how I’ve changed. I think about my accomplishments since leaving work. The languages in which I now feel comfortable (English, of course, and Portuguese) and mildly passable (French and Spanish). I exercise a lot. I work some. I read a ton. My brain is engaged in ways I never pictured. I took Algebra just for fun on Khan Academy last winter for God’s sake. I resumed playing guitar. I immerse myself in taking photos and picking the best ones, I hope, for these posts. I write blog pages knowing that they are mostly for us, to remember what we did, where we went and what we experienced years from now (though we do hope they are of some value to others as well).

I guess my point is that life is too short. We only get so many revolutions around the sun and if not now then when? I, for one, have benefited greatly from being pushed out of my comfort zone, to a country I barely knew, to challenges I could hardly have imagined. To take the road less travelled, and it has made all the difference.