Not When...Now

When I have the money...
When I get the next promotion...
When I get the job...
When I get financially stable...
When I have the time...
When I can....
When I...

Life is full of when's.  In life, there seems to be an expectation that you have to do something or get to some unspoken milestone or rule to be able to do something.  I'll change jobs when, I'll get married when, I'll travel when.  Whenever you get to that moment, you promise yourself you'll do it.

And some people are able to do that.  They check things off the list, things go according to plan, and the when becomes now.  

That's not the majority.

The truth is, there's really never the "perfect" time to do something.  Just when you think that you have done enough, saved enough, planned enough, something comes along that changes the plan.  The job you had for years suddenly has layoffs, the water cooler fails, you have to move, you find out about a health issue.  Life is full of surprises.  Most of them are wonderful.  It's the ones that aren't that disrupts our plans.

My brother is a great example of this.  Young, in graduate school, planning for the future ahead of him, he had a plan.  Graduate, get a job, and then do all of the things.  In the middle of this plan, he was offered the opportunity to travel with his best friend and their family to Poland.  His best friends speaks Polish.  He has family there, and the time to visit was now.  

I told my brother to go.  Don't question it, don't hesitate.  Opportunities come along once in awhile.  He didn't have a family.  He was renting in grad school.  I was excited for him.  He had all the reasons not to go.  It wasn't the right time.  He didn't have enough done, he would be behind, he was saving.  I gave him one last piece of advice:

"You'll never regret going.  If you don't go, it's going to be something you end up regretting."

He did not end up going.  Years later, sitting around his dining room table, with his family playing in the background, and his wife next to him, we were talking about my travels.  He sat thoughtfully, and said the one thing I knew instinctively about traveling.

"I should have gone to Poland."

That's the thing about life.  You wait for the right time, and something else comes along that changes it.  He would never regret meeting his wife, having his children, working in the job he has.  But time is different now.  Traveling as a family of four is different.  The places you go are different, the choices you make are different.  He travels, and the memories he makes are wonderful.

But he could have added Poland.

Don't wait for when.  No matter where you are in life.  You don't have to do big things.  The small trips are just as incredible as the large ones.  But when the opportunity arises, and you're given the chance to travel.  Don't wait for when.  

Go.  Money, time, the how.  It all figures itself out.  Life will present itself over and over to you.  Take the moment.  Live in it.  

​You'll never regret that decision.