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I got a little choked up as I put our tiny European rental car in to first and waved goodbye to my parents.
My parents flew from the over from the States to visit us in Zadar, Croatia this week (where we are staying for the summer). The flight was annoyingly expensive compared to everywhere else in Europe and took them nearly 24 hours to arrive. They were only here for a week. Was that time and expense and traveling effort worth it?
They basically came to see my son, their grandson (and the rest of us, but we know what the real draw is) – who they hadn’t seen in a while. By the time they left, I didn’t want the good times to end.
Sometimes I feel nostalgia for the good old days – times like college or when I was a starving bicycle racer sleeping on people’s floors and couches.
Sometimes I get immediately nostalgic for things – as they end. When I was a kid I would cry when summer camp ended, I would cry when sleepover birthday parties ended, I would cry when Christmas was over, I cried when I had to graduate from elementary school.
Basically, I never want the good times to end.
I remember playing in the yard and our family would go to the public pool, interrupting my play time. I would beg not to go. Then we would get to the pool and I would begrudgingly dive for pennies at the bottom. When it was time to go home, I would beg to stay longer so I could keep playing.
There just never seems enough time to play.
Except that is all we did was play while my parents were here. I only worked one day (Monday is the day I usually reserve for my business coaching clients). I went cycling all over the place with my dad, about 60 km, two days in a row. We swam in the Adriatic Sea. We did a family photo shoot. We saw rivers and canyons and waterfalls and lakes and medieval cities and islands and National Parks and World Heritage sites. We ate at the best local restaurants. We hiked 15 hours in the last three days. And now I’m utterly tired out.
I try to live in the moment. But there are so many cool things to look forward too! And so many amazing experiences to reflect on.
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And I didn’t want the fun to end. Except that I kinda did because I also love what I do for a living and I can finally get back to my work now that I don’t have guests.
I felt the same sense of nostalgia and post vacation blues creeping in as we drove away from leaving my parents on the side of the road (don’t worry, they were catching the bus to Zagreb).
Sometimes you don’t even need to be talking to have an amazing time with someone. There were times when I was riding with my dad in complete silence and we were just enjoying the landscape together and for ourselves at the same time.
Or sometimes you round a bend and see another, even bigger, waterfall and everyone just says: “Wow”, and that’s all there is to say.
When a week with so much diversity of experience ends, you feel like you have lived an entire lifetime.
Even when I try to go slow, my whole life is just hurdling from one new experience to another. I feel like I have lived a hundred years of experiences in the last two. Time seems to move impossibly fast sometimes.
And then when you are waiting for the Tour de France to start or your baby to just get tired and fall asleep already, it seem impossibly slow.
Lying in bed at night, I used to ask my partner Heidi what her favorite part of they day was. She would say “Right now”. Way to live in the moment! So I started asking her what her three favorite parts of the day were.
I try to live in the moment. But there are so many cool things to look forward too! And so many amazing experiences to reflect on.
If only there was a way to hold all of your life’s experiences in your mind at one time. But then your head would explode.
I really understand my son. He just plays and plays until all of a sudden he is exhausted and starts crying because he doesn’t want the fun to end but he knows that he is going to pass out any minute.
Maybe, we are not meant to hold on to moments, because they will enrich the next moment simply by having happened, and each present moment simply gets better and better.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
great writing! Do check out my blog as well at https://www.printoctopus.com/blog/