Simple Journeys

By Kristine Lomeda

Whenever there’s available time for me to catch up with my friends and relatives, I can’t help but ask: am I really getting old? I haven’t been able to share my thoughts and dreams with them lately. Have I lost my precious chances of spending quality time with them? Or is it just because I didn’t make an effort to have time with them?

The family’s recent trip to Punta Fuego opened so many opportunities for me to bond with my cousins. Only now did I realize my regret of opting not to join them on their vacations. The Palawan escapades, the Hong Kong shopping, and the once-in-a-lifetime chance of visiting The Netherlands are just some of the travel opportunities I passed up.

The Punta Fuego vacation was an eye-opener for me. It made me realize that spending time with my loved ones and having simple family gatherings can yield stories which I can share with my children in the near future.

The trip also doubled as a sort of soul-searching activity for me. Most people treat their vacation as a device for escaping the busy downtown or a means of getting rid of their problems. We often take this scenario for granted, maybe because we have been robots who refuse to be emotional because we need to be dominant and strong in our work. We choose to be practical with everything so it won’t hurt too much. But at the end of the day, we tend to examine ourselves. We are like lost sheep wanting to be herded by shepherds -- our loved ones. We find ourselves like empty cups wanting to be full again.

But how would we be able to achieve all these if we become too technical with our lives? We need to reflect on ourselves, for us to be familiar with the unfamiliar; for us to feel better.

The sudden death of someone close to my heart had brought me great fear. All these years, I’ve wanted to end everything -- my schooling, my problems. Many of us want to make things easy, we tend to become “happy go lucky.” We often look at our lives as a strenuous, perplexing journey full of ups and downs, highs and lows, success and defeats. For most of us whose lives are always on qualm, we just want to put an end to it at several occasions. But when we see somebody face death, we could only ask for one more; just one more day. I can only imagine how confused the Lord already is! We know, we shall all come to pass and when that arrives, that itself becomes a journey guaranteed to be infinite.

So before that time comes, let us all make the most out of our lives. Let’s take a short detour, a momentary pit stop to see how thankful we should be. Then we can resume our journey again.

Remember all the people who touched our lives, the places we’ve been to, and the experiences that made us what we are today. We can take souvenir photographs, or write on our journals, or simply hammer the things into our memory banks.

Once we reach our life’s peak, we can blissfully travel back to these memories with the pleasure of being able to meet these people, the delight of being able to go to these places, and the gratefulness of being able to create these wonderful experiences while sitting on our comfy rocking chair and waiting for the late afternoon sun.