#Reverb12 Day 3: Wishing

For the month of December, I'm working on doing the daily series of Reverb prompts to help me reflect on the prior year and hope/plan for the upcoming year. If you're interested, join in; I found this to be a very useful exercise when I did it two years ago.

#reverb12 Day 3: What do you really wish for?

Imagine a scenario where you only had one year left to live. What is one thing that you really wish to do that you just haven't had the chance to accomplish yet?

I would like to add: what steps could you take (however small) to ensure that you accomplish this thing in 2013?

Hmm, this is tough.  It would probably be wishing to see a few places on my top destinations list that I haven't yet seen, or getting this dream marathon time. 

As much as I love running, I can't imagine wanting to spend the last year of my life training hard for a goal marathon time.  Especially since part of the allure of the marathon is that even with all the right training, there are so many other variables that can impact whether you get to run your race as planned or not -- marathons get cancelled, flu viruses infect, weather is unpredictable, etc.  I wouldn't want to work hard for my last year of life and then have a disappointing race day.  With plenty of years ahead of me (I hope), I'm more than happy to spend a year working very hard for a goal, and if it all falls apart, there's always another race (not true if it's your last year though). 

So with one year left to live, the one thing I just haven't accomplished yet is feeling like I've really seen all the places that interest me in the world.  So my last year would be traveling, going with family and friends for much of the time. 

I'm not planning to take any steps in 2013 to see any of my top 10 remaining destinations.  Israel, Egypt, India and South Africa are at the top of my remaining list (roughly in that order).  Instead, in 2013, I believe we will be traveling to Germany and Italy (and maybe, maybe, maybe Lichtenstein so I can say I went to a new country). 

But in some ways, our 2013 Germany-Italy trip is setting up a trip to my top 10 remaining destinations. 

That whole being married thing involves a lot of compromise, particularly when it comes to something like foreign travel.  You really both have to be on the same page with the whole plan.  It doesn't work if your other half doesn't share an agenda (I guess some people travel separately, but that wouldn't be fun for us). 

In our marriage, hubby likes seeing new places, but I think, left to his own devices, his dream would probably be to go to Italy 1-2 times a year, and once a year, add a few days elsewhere onto the Italy trip.  But pretty much every foreign trip would include some time in Italy. 

If it were completely up to me, as much as I love Italy (and his family there), I'd probably only go there every 4 years or so, and instead I'd fill up the intervening vacation days and dollars with trips to completely new places.

The balance we've struck is that he sometimes goes to Italy without me (he has lots more vacation time than I do, plus it's his family there), we go to Italy together about every other year, and on the non-Italy year, we go somewhere else.  Thus, the last few years of travels have looked like this: 
2009 was Italy, Greece and Turkey;
2010 was Russia and Sweden;
2011 was Italy and Paris;
2012 was China. 

So by signing on with his plan to go to Italy in 2013, that means he'll sign onto my plan to go somewhere else in 2014 -- that will probably be India, unless sudden world peace happens. 

My 2013 trip will be a lovely compromise (I'm certainly not complaining, I'm very excited about Italy and Germany) and keeps me moving toward my wish of seeing all kinds of places that interest me.  And incidentally, I'm planning to run the marathon in Berlin, and I will be training hard for my goal time, so if it does happen that I only have 12 months left to live, hopefully I will at least have met that goal, even if it wasn't my top choice for how I'd spend my last year. 

Now if only I could take some concrete steps to promote peace in Israel and Egypt, then I could really get to work on my list!