I remember lying on my bed daydreaming about traveling around Europe. I longed to experience (not just visit, experience) all the places I’d only seen in movies and magazines. Paris. London. Rome. And all the quaint villages and towns in between. Medieval castles. Huge gothic churches. I was about 16 years old when my wanderlust took hold.
Why then did it take me almost 35 years to get there?
The short answer is, I was waiting for someone to want to go with me. The truth is, I was too afraid to go alone.
Plus life got in the way: mortgage, kids, car payments… All of which I chose wholeheartedly over that teenage dream. This was adulthood after all. I embraced this life stage and loved it.
Except my longing for Europe never went away.
Worse, it began to turn into regret.
Until I was no longer willing to wait for my dreams to come true.
Newly divorced and with money from the sale of our house, I set off for a five week trip around Italy. Mama mia! It did not disappoint. And it fuelled my desire for more.
Fast forward five years and I’ve checked off oodles of bucket list destinations, and the list keeps growing.
What I’ve learned is that dreams aren’t something to wait for. Because “some day” might never come.
My parents taught me that; both by the actions they took in life and the actions life took on them.
One of the things I most admired about my mother was her sharp memory. Now she has Alzheimer’s Disease and doesn’t know any of us. The last ten years of my dad’s life, we watched his mobility slowly decline.
You can’t always foresee the cards you’ll be dealt.
“Will I regret it if I don’t do it?”, is a question I often ask myself. If the answer is yes, I start doing the inner and outer work to make it happen. (The inner work is the hardest part.)
It begins with a Yes to yourself and a Yes to your dream. Then it’s a matter of working through all the ‘what ifs’, “I shouldn’t because ___”, guilt, feelings of undeserving, and all the other ways fear makes you stop and wait …as you watch more years tick by.
Dreams are something to pursue, especially if you want to look back without regrets.
I remember vividly the feeling of the lump in my throat. I was sitting in a taxi outside my hotel about to head to the train station. I was choking back tears as I watched my friend’s taxi drive away. She’d accompanied me on the first leg of my aforementioned Italian odyssey. We’d just hugged goodbye and climbed into our separate cabs. She was headed for the airport in Rome. For the next three weeks I’d be on my own. I suddenly felt very small and very alone. No one in the entire world would know just where I was or what I was doing. I was scared. My taxi began to pull away from the curb. I swallowed hard, pushed my fear aside and looked straight ahead. I was officially entering my brave new world; my 16 year old self smiling broadly from within.
And I’ve never turned back.
Here’s what I know for sure…
Your dreams and desire are there for a reason. Unless you take action to fulfill them, you will always wonder, yearn, and if you wait too long, regret not going after them.
I have a deck of Louise Hay affirmation cards on my desk. Today I pulled this one:
I think it was meant for us both. ❤️
When you dare to follow your inner wisdom, you live a life with no regrets.
What’s one way your inner wisdom is speaking to you today?
What’s another?
To your joy-filled life!