Is it better to travel than arrive?

Picture credit: Author’s own – our tulips are yet to bloom, but we are enjoying the anticipation…

One evening a few weeks back, my wife mentioned a trip to Amsterdam during the tulip season was on her list of things to do. Thus inspired, within the hour, we had booked the trip and started looking forward to it. Having something to look forward to feels good and we are enjoying the anticipation of travelling somewhere new.

Our preparations have taken various forms. Travel guides have been purchased and maps perused. YouTube travel blogs have been viewed and reservations at recommended restaurants made. Once we knew we were going, we noticed things that otherwise would have passed us by. Having a destination makes a difference.

We realised ‘Occupied City’, directed by Steve McQueen, was showing at the Barbican, so we booked last-minute tickets. This epic film/documentary explores the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam and we learned a great deal. If you ever see it, a warning - not everyone in the cinema expected the film to be four and a half hours long!

In a bookshop, I spotted a title, ‘Why the Dutch are Different’ by Ben Coates. If you want to know how the Dutch became the tallest people in the world and why carrots are orange, it’s all in there. ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and Corrie Ten Boom’s ‘The Hiding Place’ have been read again, and the Kindle is loaded with a series of crime novels set in the city.

We have joined a Facebook group for travel hints and tips and now receive a daily dose of information, much of it useful (you don’t go to coffee shops for coffee) and some of it repetitive (Hi guys!!! I’m arriving in an hour, what is there to do and why are all the hotels full?).

The planning made me recall the question, ‘is it better to travel than arrive?’. After a quick Google, I discovered that Robert Louis Stevenson is credited with the quote, but it doesn’t match my recollection exactly. More accurately, he said, ‘it is better to travel hopefully, than to arrive.’

We will travel with hope, but we can’t know for certain what lies ahead. For all our planning, the weather may be foul or the tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens unseasonably late to bloom! Regardless of the unknowns, though, we are enjoying the journey already. We are noticing and learning things we would otherwise have missed were it not for the destination. 

So, let’s enjoy the journey of writing, be hopeful in our endeavours, and learn along the way, regardless of what happens when we ‘arrive.’ For those of us of faith, we can take heart in the truth that the best is yet to come.

‘I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits and in his word I put my hope.’

Psalm 130 v.5