We Got On A Plane — Liberty Wealth

I am writing from the Scottish Highlands. It’s been a long time since we have had an adventure and it feels so good to be back out in the world. And this is a spectacular part of the world. Remote and natural, it’s a place to immerse yourself in the great outdoors. In the last three days we have climbed a mountain, canoed a river, fished a river, rode horses in the mountains and seen some of the biggest trees in the UK.

We have been sheltered from the pandemic in Cayman and we have much to be grateful for. But I can’t help thinking about what has been missed. And it’s funny because sometimes you don’t realise what you have missed until you have it again.

Travelling in 2021 is contentious, I know. And I understand why. We are lucky – we can afford to travel (the costs have certainly gone up), our kids are old enough that they happily put on masks (honestly, I have been surprised by how much of a non-event wearing masks is) and we have a home where (I think) we can get through a 14 day quarantine.

Here’s my take on travel, and why we opted to get on a plane.

Time is precious – it’s our most important commodity. None of us are guaranteed another day on this planet. I have been thinking about this a lot recently after listening to Sebastian Junger on Tim Ferris’ podcast.

Sebastian is a war reporter and has spent much of his working life in situations that could have killed him. One June afternoon he was sitting at home, at his desk, writing his book ‘Freedom’. Suddenly he collapsed in pain. An artery had ruptured and he had started bleeding into his abdomen. When he woke in the hospital the next day the doctors told him that it was a complete miracle that he was alive. No one really understood how he survived it.

Sebastian explained how the experience changed him:

“I realized nothing, really, nothing is for sure. I mean, I know you can get cancer and you can have a car accident and all that stuff. We all know that, but I didn’t know nothing was for sure moment by moment. That was news to me and it gave me this crazy sort of either an existential crisis or an existential blessing, which is if you can be annihilated at any moment, then it’s each moment that’s precious. And if you don’t experience each moment, you don’t understand how precious each moment is, you are missing out because that’s all you can ever be sure of getting is what’s happening right now. “

His words ‘nothing was for sure moment by moment’ struck me. We understand all the known risks in life and Sebastian put himself at great risk in his work. But the fact that you can be sitting in one moment and then next moment it is all gone is incredibly profound to the way we live.

And this takes me to travel. We are incredibly lucky that both my husband and I have a sibling that live in Cayman. What an amazing thing it has been to have them close over the past two years. But we both have four other siblings. And 13 nieces and nephews. Our children have cousins that they haven’t seen in two years – a new cousin that they hadn’t even met. We have parents that are in their 70s and 80s, for whom every next moment is more precarious than our own next moment.

This is the same for many of you reading this – we are far from unique.

To forgo another year – another 7.3 million moments* – for me, that risk was too great to bear.

The risk that someone, someone we love (or us), wouldn’t see another 7.3 million moments seemed like a much bigger risk than entering the world as double vaccinated adults, and young children for whom the virus appears to present very little danger.

I also desperately wanted my kids to get back out into the world – to experience everything that we can’t have on our glorious little island. Things like rivers and mountains and towns and cities and trains and buses and many of the most simple things that we don’t have. We only have 18 summers with each of our children before they are adults. The time, it’s just so incredibly precious. You never get it back.

And so, over the past few weeks, we have added to our memory bank. We have experienced glorious moments with family and friends. Happiness and laughter and joy – moments where my heart couldn’t have been any fuller. If I don’t see the next moment, or anyone I love doesn’t see the next moment, then I can say, ‘thank goodness I got that time’.

Georgie

georgie@libertywealth.ky

*Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, suggests that each day we experience approximately 20,000 moments. A moment is defined as a few seconds in which our brain records an experience.