Time for introspection

One of the more challenging aspects of the trip has been finding the balance between the adventures we want to have and the home schooling / chill out time that the family needs. Today is a great example. We’re only on the Big Island of Hawaii for four days and I want to fit in as many of the “must sees” as possible. Josh and Simon, on the other hand, are concerned that they’re falling behind in school (they’re not) and feel like we’ve been doing too much and want to hang out by the pool after a morning of school work. I would have preferred to spend the morning snorkeling, the afternoon kayaking and the evening watching lava flows, but instead we’ve spent the morning lazing around, and will do a swim in the afternoon before, hopefully, heading out to see the lava flowing at night.

Have I always wanted to fit in as much as possible and been disappointed when we don’t get it all done or am I trying to make up for lost time and have lots of adventures / unique experiences while I can?

Like most marriages, this trip has required a lot of compromise and patience. I have to keep reminding myself how lucky we are to be able to take time off from work to travel; to show the kids parts of the country we’ve never seen before; to learn more about each other than we had before (and lots of TMI moments). Instead of looking at all the places / hikes / museums we’ve had to skip, I should try to focus on all of the opportunities that we have taken advantage of. As Wendy always recommends, it’s better to focus on the positives, but sometimes I can’t help but think of all the lost opportunities, too.

When we started planning this trip I thought I would have lots of time for introspection, reading, blogging, etc. Instead I’m amazed at how quickly the time flies and how little we seem to get done / accomplish on some days. I wouldn’t do it much differently if I had the chance to do it over – I would get a larger RV, do more advance planning, spend more time in fewer places and a whole host of other things that I’ll need to write down in a future blog, but overall the experiences have been great. However, I never realized how much of our lives is taken up by the pedestrian – preparing meals, driving, planning cleaning, etc. Even in incredibly beautiful places like our rented condo by the beach in Hawaii, we still can’t seem to get the ratio of interesting / exciting / thrilling to have-to / boring/ everyday more than 20% to 80%. Maybe I need to take more joy in the mundane and/or learn to appreciate that I’ve climbed so high up Maslow’s pyramid that I can appreciate how narrow the top usually is; actually, I think Maslow simply defined it as a hierarchy, but when I look at the time spent on the foundational food / shelter / clothing / sleep / hygiene layers, a pyramid would have been more apt.

Nonetheless, some of the best parts of the trip have come at unexpected moments and not been part of a greater adventure -- like today’s coconut experience. This morning, Simon found a coconut on the ground near our condo. Simon has never liked coconut (or any other fruit or vegetable), but perhaps because this was something that he found, he was very keen to eat it. So, we (all four of us) then spent a substantial amount of time, individually and collectively, trying to get the coconut open. We used a screwdriver and hammer, we used rocks, we threw it on the stone patio. After 10 or 15 minutes of trying, we’d give up and go back to our other projects, only to have another one or two of us try again for an additional 20-30 minutes. Finally, four hours after the initial tries (and with about an hour and a half of cumulative effort), Josh dealt the splitting blow with a large lava rock that was lying nearby. It’s difficult to state just how delighted Simon was to actually eat something he had found. And it was great hearing Josh and Simon argue over who deserved more credit – the one who found the coconut or the one who split it open. And, although I’ve always believed in an “eat what you kill” policy when it comes to salesperson commissions, I’d never imagined the benefits of enacting it as part of family meal planning. Simon is now so excited about the free food that him and Josh have gone off on an adventure walk to find more!

Well, the dishes are piling up in the sink, Josh needs help with his schoolwork and Simon needs consoling about something – as they say, “another ho-hum day in paradise.”

Aloha.

PS – A few readers have asked why I don’t blog more?

I don’t mean to whine but while Josh, Simon and Wendy are writing their weekly (or more often) blogs, someone has to maintain the Web site, upload all the photos, do the route planning and a number of other chores aimed at preventing our adventure from disintegrating into chaos. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the photos yet, I think there are lots of good ones. They’re neatly divided into albums by date / location and are accessible at www.flickr.com/photos/familyadventure and, they’re all geo-coded in case you want to view them on a map.