To travel is to live. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

Had the chance or took a chance?

"The purpose of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." ~ Samuel Johnson

One of the most important things I've learned from traveling is that reality is often very different from our expectations.

Sometimes a place exceeds everything we imagined, and sometimes we discover challenges we never considered.

I've often heard people say, "I wish I'd had the opportunity to travel."

But I've never heard anyone say, "I wish I'd made the opportunity to travel."

Remember that many times you can make an opportunity happen.

You don't have to wait for an opportunity to come along or for something to happen. You can make things happen.

At bedtime, I used to ask my kids, "What happened to you today?"

That gave them the chance to open up and talk to me about anything they wanted to talk about or anything that was on their mind.

One night I asked them, "What did you happen to today?"

That shocked their systems. They had never thought about the concept of them happening to something or somebody.

Some days things happen to you, and some days you happen to things or other people.

Bottom line: What did you happen to today? Where would you like to travel to? What's the real reason you can't go there now?