Everybody gets caught up in those late night schemes with their friends sometimes. You know, the ones where you plan to take over the world, go on a crazy trip, dye your hair magenta, or invent some insane pizza-pasta-sushi-burrito hybrid. But when the opportunity comes to actually do it, they back out.
And I’m not talking about those situations where you can’t do it. sometimes things turn out to be completely unattainable; Plans fall through. Sometimes you can’t get the support, or funding, or other responsibilities come up.
But I see people all the time say I’m going to do this! And they really want to, even if it scares them. But they don’t take the steps. They keep acting like they’ll really do it, but don’t even take the tiniest baby steps. It’ll change your life, and I really think it’s just a mindset holding you back.
I’ll be forever grateful for my family being that type to not only make wild plans, but to actually do them. My mom is the best at those schemes, and it made for an amazing childhood. We’d propose something wacky and Mom would just make it happen!
“Are we seriously going to do this?”
“I don’t see what’s stopping us!”
My mom decided she was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. And she did it. She got out there on her own and then my grandpa died, and she had to come home. She decided to go even bigger and hike the Camino de Santiago… AND THEN SHE DID IT.
I can’t believe her sometimes. She’s truly amazing. And I like to think a little bit of that passed on to me.
Right before my high-school graduation, I sat on the kitchen floor with my friend as we planned our grand European backpacking trip. I signed up for all online classes my first semester of college so there was nothing stopping me from leaving, I saved and saved, I researched and planned. I was so certain that I was going to make it happen with sheer force of will that I turned down the opportunity to go to Europe with my parents. I wanted to do it on my own! But I didn’t realize that people don’t have that mindset. My friend was saying we were going to go in the sense that everyone says they’ll eventually make their pipe-dream come true.
That was really tough.
But then I found somebody who was just as good at following through as the Washburns! We went to Italy and it was magical. And then he had the idea to go to China! I hadn’t ever thought about it before, but it seemed like a great adventure, so we made it happen! And then while we were in China, he decided to apply for a Master’s program…. In Russia. And he got accepted! When he told me he was accepted, we just looked at each other, like…. “Are we going to do this? Are we moving to Russia?” And then we decided we would! And we did it! We made it happen.
I hope that when I have my own kids, I can pass it on to them. I hope we can plan a road trip over breakfast and be there by midnight. I hope I can give my weird kid the ghost hunting road trip of their dreams, just for me and them. I hope that we can make a time investment to figure out how to fix up an old boat together like my dad did so many times. I hope when my kids are all grown up and come home for the weekend, that we can go skydiving on a whim.
I hope I can keep that same sense of “we really can do anything we want to” and pass it on to my kids.
Finding Eden 