At the last minute I decided to take my girls on a little trip to San Diego. What's great about this particular destination are all the different parks in the area. My girls decided they wanted to visit Seaworld and the San Diego Zoo. We stayed at the Hotel Coronado, which is a great old hotel with a lot of history. So much history that it is supposed to be haunted (so glad we didn’t know that before stayed over).I made a conscious decision to make this particular trip different than years past. I didn’t want the typical stress involved in going from place to place, figuring out if all the reservations were perfect, or if we were on schedule, blablabla. Besides, who says it’s required to even have a schedule. It is summer time, right? Isn’t the point of summer to take life down more than a few notches?
So we did. For the entire trip anytime one of my girls asked what time we were supposed to leave, or go do ANYTHING, I would respond, “Whatever you guys want to do.” It was liberating to say those words and felt incredibly good. The smile of surprise and satisfaction on my daughter’s faces confirmed what I was feeling inside and I knew we were on the right track.
Our trip became an exercise in living moment to moment without feeling sad because we needed to leave, or to stay. We didn’t obsess about some imaginary schedule that had to be obeyed or anyone telling us it was time to go.
What we got was the right amount of time with Shamu, the right amount of time with our toes in the sand, and the right amount of time in the sweltering heat of the San Diego Zoo (which was a lot less than any of us had anticipated, thank goodness). What we got was exactly what we all so desperately needed, time to slow down and do something novel…just be.
