“And patience [worketh] experience; and experience, hope” (Paul, Romans 5:4).
As Malcolm Gladwell argued in his bestseller book, Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours which is approximately 10 years of deliberate practice to become an expert.
With the goal to travel to 100 countries in10 years, that would make us seasoned family travellers. We’re onto our six years of happily traveling the kids along our family adventures, and by far, explored 36 countries, including the new territory we are currently exploring at the moment, Canada!
Yes, there are certain traveling tasks that feel so routine, like appointment with embassies, visa applications, packing, adjusting to jet lag and body clock. These are great expertise to have as a working professional. Patience with documents, mastery of own body sleep and up close encounters with countries diplomats… necessary skills of a future CEO or founder of a corporation, and we can discuss further why!
However, more importantly, though skills which we are yet to master, there are hormones, grumpiness and boredom.
Hormones, there traveling women vs. two patient men makes a team. This means at the very least, two weeks of PMS (premenstrual syndrome) of emotions, the struggle is real. Acknowledging this, makes the battle easier, though we can only monitor, not control. Experiences on the pattern makes it understandable and yes, conquerable, if not tolerable for the surrounding men around these women.
Grumpiness, or bad hair day moments, or waking up at the wrong side of the bed, is also normal during family travels. One day something too personal embarrassing the other. Too close for comfort takes patience and experience, too.
Boredom, because what parents may find interesting, may be so very boring for the kids and the other way around. We would not be telling the entire truth to our traveling adventures, if we would lying if we say “everybody loves visiting .. insert name of place/ country/ region… Nope, most of the time, there’s someone who will rain on somebody’s parade when family travels together.
BUT, there are also the AHA moments, the wonder-at-first-sight moments, laugh-out-loud-together-moments, we-actually-saw-what-happened-together-moments.
AND… these moments turn into memories. Memories that would be from imprints on their lives and define the decisions and actions they would do in the future, what will define who they will be by choice.
Experience together over any material things… no argument there. We’re armed with experience-building patience, even if it takes 10,000 more hours together!
Living up to our main family value, we really are a hopeful bunch.
Turknoy Travels 100! 