No regrets

This is a repost from lostandfoundtravel.net

I bet some of our readers - and readers of my personal blog - have wondered if we have any regrets about our trip to Thailand. Now that we’re home and the trip is over and the money is long gone and there are staggeringly empty months ahead, I know some must ask: was it worth it?

And no matter what comes of our lives in the next few months, no matter what fears arise at 6AM, no matter what struggles we will live through while trying to pool money together, there is no part of me that regrets what we did.

This “recession” is about so much more than “money.” This recession is about learning to live with less, learning to live more simply, learning to see the world around you, learning to appreciate what we have, learning to actually see other people, learning to work hard, learning to laugh, learning to be self-reliant, learning to see the beauty through mounds of dirt.

And this is what we learned in Thailand. We learned how to be strong. We saw the art and compassion in a dirty city built in a jungle. We washed our own clothes with our own hands. We saw that even though we may be broke, we are not poor. We lived with what we could carry with us and felt the freedom from cumbersome attachments. We enjoyed each others company so fully that we can bring that home with us to help get us through the really rough days. We saw people unlike ourselves that were so very much like ourselves. We learned that beauty and color and joy and food and love have nothing to do with how many dollars or baht we have.

So now that we’re here and a few thousand dollars that went to United Airlines would be lovely right now, I don’t want that money back for anything in the world. If I could change it now and we could have the money back without the trip, I would spit on that money.

Any regrets? The only one I have is that we didn’t stay a little longer.