Joy in Every Moment by Tzivia Gover

Author:Tzivia Gover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 2015-09-30T13:23:08+00:00

five

Joy on the Go

We travel, initially,

to lose ourselves;

and we travel, next,

to find ourselves.

Pico Iyer

Destination Unknown

You studied the maps, tour books, and travel sites for weeks before setting out on this trip. You bookmarked the museums you planned to visit and the sites you wanted most to see. But on the first day of your journey, en route to a grand statue you looked forward to seeing, you get lost amongst the other tourists weighted down by their cameras, plastic water bottles, and maps. You make a wrong turn and stumble onto a lonely path along the sea, pass a fort you don’t know the name of and a plaza you don’t recognize from your studies of this city. You can’t remember any of the foreign phrases you had memorized before you left.

Too tired to even look at the guidebook once more, you wander through tunnels and over footbridges until, feet sore and throat parched, you enter a little restaurant where you are seated on an outdoor patio in a walled garden. You look up to see an old, proud tree that is decorated with wooden birds dancing from its branches. A coil of white lights swirls around its wide trunk, creating a cheerful glow as the afternoon slips into evening. You order a drink and gaze at a little girl running between the tables with cloth roses pinned to the skirt of her bright yellow dress. A stray cat brushes its tail against your chair, peering up at you with elegant and expressive eyes. You feed it a bit of your bread, and suddenly you no longer mind that you never found that statue. You can’t imagine being more content than you are right here, in the magical garden of an ordinary restaurant you weren’t even looking for.

We plan and plot our happily-ever-afters: the house, the spouse, the number of children, and the career that we think will bring fulfillment. And then other things happen. If only we could accept them with the grace and ease we so easily find when we’re on vacation — when disappointments are easily remedied by the small delights that couldn’t be predicted by any tourist website or travel book.

Sure, it’s good to scope out the territory ahead of the journey and draft a plan. But it’s just as important to recognize when we’re lost, ask for guidance, and allow unexpected twists and turns to bring different treasures from the ones we’d planned for. When we welcome surprises and become willing to greet the path we’ve landed on with a happy heart, we stumble into magic, beauty, and joy.

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