Living life fully and meaningfully.  Isn’t that the true definition of  a life well-lived?  Anything less?  Well, that’s simply not enough. 

At least, that’s how I felt as I prepared for my first international adventure.  It was the early 1980s and I was fresh out of university. Reagan was president of the United States and the wall was up in Germany. A cool new computer called a ‘Mac’ hit the market and many of my friends were heading to join a small company called Apple in Cupertino, California. The Space Shuttle Discovery was preparing for its maiden voyage and the Aids virus was finally identified by a French immunologist named Luc Antoine Montagnier.

I research, scraped and saved for a full year. I had a map pinned to the wall, marked with train schedules and music festival dates in England, Scotland and Ireland.  Surely, this would be my only global adventure. Raising their ten kids, my own parents certainly harboured no notions of international travel. Their eyes were fixed on a  peaceful spot in the country near our favourite fishing hole.

Living Life fully

But as the old saying goes: “If you want to make God laugh, make plans.”  Who could guess that my robust father would die suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50, leaving a 49 year old widow with a handful of teenagers still at home?

So much for living life fully!

The summer after Dad’s death, my 18 yr old sister desperately wanted to travel with me.  Life is for living, we pleaded. We promised we could scrape together the flight money doing odd jobs and drawing loans from my older brothers. We would backpack, stay in hostels and meet distant Irish cousins.

I’m not sure why Mom agreed–perhaps we just wore her down. Nonetheless, her single decision changed all of our lives forever. Over the 30 years, my younger sister would move to Africa for a term, travel extensively and raise her children with a truly global worldview. Our journeys would take us personally and professionally to the far corners of the earth.

And my mother? God rest her soul, she bravely ventured with me into the unspoiled corners of Ireland, only two years after my father’s death. After that crazy experience, she never looked back and she never looked at life the same again. She discovered that travel feeds the mind, body and soul. Windows open into new worlds and new adventures. Russia. China. Canada. Mexico. Yugoslavia. Greece. Rome.  She explored them all. After all, who wants to reach old age without real stories to share?

The road truly traveled

As for me, I am now living life between the US, Canada and Ireland annually and when I’m lucky, Paris. I’m on my 4th or 5th passport and remarkably, so is my son.  At 14, he’s earned multiple frequent flier tickets, speaks French and Irish, and has attended school in the US, Ireland and Canada–feeding the mind, body and soul and building a life of experiences and stories. I launched Celtic Crossings in 1995 and never looked back either.

As my mother was fond of saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what happens. It matters what happens next!”