Why Now?

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” — Anthony Bourdain

Why now? Because Beckett is 11 and Declan is 7. We’ll only have one opportunity to travel with an 11 and a 7 year old. We only have one chance to impact their worldview in ways that can’t be undone by whatever world they settle into as adults. Since we first started talking about having kids we’ve said that we want to create great citizens of the world. While we love being American and very unbelievably fortunate to be so, we’ve always known there’s more to life than the 25 mile radius around your house. Research from the U.S. Census Bureau states nearly 60% of young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up and 80% live within 100 miles. Somewhere around 10% have never left the state they were born in for any reason.

While I love Texas and have written books saying as much, that ain’t it y’all. That just ain’t it. There’s so much out there and BECAUSE we’re Americans, we can see whatever we want. Up until 2006, the US Passport was the most powerful on earth. While times are changing and we’ve dropped to 10th, we still have visa-free or visa on arrival access to over 167 countries. We have every opportunity in the world to get out there and see, but you have to make it a priority. We’ve spent years focused on making changes to our life to allow for something like this to happen. This is what we want… we need stories and memories… not stuff.

Beckett’s 11. He’s going to middle school this year. The time is now. There are dozen of studies on the impact of the psychology of preteens and tweens, but we just far more colloquially believe that middle school sucks. If we can keep him out of that hellscape, I’ll absolutely call it a win. We are, currently, their truth. They believe us and trust us and want to be good because we want them to be good. They’ll inevitably change and start to prioritize different things in life than if their parents are happy with them, but for now, we’d like to hold on to this as tightly as possible. And they’re in the middle of developing a truly unbreakable bond.

We’ve been gone for less than a month and it’s hard to describe the evolution of their relationship. I’ve told them repeatedly that they need each other because the day will come when we’re no longer here… but they’ll always have each other and always love each other… At least if we have anything to say about it, they will. They’re bonding in ways that could never happen in the states and they’re learning and their relationship is growing and changing right in front of our eyes. They’re also driving us nuts… but travel is hard. Worth every second, but it’s hard. I told Beckett the other day that God must want me to work on my patience and he thought it was hysterical. Then he slapped his brother in the back of the head to prove me right.

We left now because it’s now or never. We left because we truly believe this will make our kids better little humans and get them out of the bubbles they’ve been in up until now. Their lives have been easy because we’ve done everything we could to make them that way. We wouldn’t change it for anything, and the fact that we’ve worked hard enough and been lucky enough to give them, basically, anything they’ve wanted, has been the ultimate blessing. But maybe they could do with a wee bit more adversity. At least seeing that we don’t need all the STUFF that the US makes kids feel like they need and seeing that life can be fun and they can be happy with a life they can pack into a suitcase and a backpack.

While we believe in equal rights for all and we believe that there are better ways to approach life than the things that are forced upon us in the United States, this is not why we left. There’s a dozen things we could say about the direction the United States is going on any level, but to be completely honest, we never threw our arms up and said “we’ve got to get out of here.” The United States is one of the most incredible places in the world and we are unbelievably lucky to have been born where we were. Look around… Look around… Just don’t limit it to what you see where you stand. Move.