Sometimes You Have To Travel Thousands Of Miles To Stay Still

Hi all! I’m still in Northern California with my family and guess what? I haven’t left the house since Friday. Why is that, you ask? Well, since I flew to California to cook for my dad and my dad ended up at my cousin’s house in Northern Cali (did you read about that? If not, click this link. This one right here that is lit up. Yes, this one…go ahead), I stayed in the house and cooked.

Now, you may be thinking, “Well that sucks.” But I’m not sure that you know how much I love to cook. I’m totally serious. I think you know about my love affair with food but I also actually enjoy cooking so to be able to cook for 12 members of my family made me giddy with happiness. Now, what does this have to do with travel, you may be asking?

Well here it is: I am in Northern California, not far from San Francisco so there are tons of things I could have seen, places I could have driven to and photographed so I could have more to blog about. And for a minute I did think about leaving so that I could take advantage of such a cool city. But then I would have missed playing dominoes with my 3 year old cousin (well, we actually just stacked them, lined them up and watched them fall down but that counts, right?).

I would have missed the endless laughter and stories from my family. I would have missed the excellent conversations. We don’t just sit around and have frivolous chatter. We talked about taxes, racism, the Trayvon Martin case, migrant workers, Illegal immigrants, Obamacare, and Socialism to name a few.  Our discussions are vast, varied, respectful, and opinionated and the best thing is that even though we all didn’t agree, there was no arguing, fighting, yelling, or screaming. Just talking.

Had I left for a little while I wouldn’t have found out that my cousin’s husband has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan 4 times. I wouldn’t have heard my cousins laugh as they were talking about scenes from their favorite sitcom, The Big Bang Theory and I wouldn’t have been able to be the first person to show my little cousin how to stand dominoes up so we can watch them fall down.

Travel is essential to my life. It’s like after a while it gets hard for me to breathe when I can’t be on the go.  Exploring a city excites me but I also have to live in the moments I have with my family. I have to sometimes give up the chance to explore when it means I can be cocooned in the love and peace of my family.  I had to travel 3,000 miles to stay still, and I’m ok with that because even though I love traveling, I love time with my family more. So if you find yourself someplace with people that you love, instead of thinking about what you are missing by not exploring, try and focus on what you are gaining by staying put.