It's All Going to be OK

The Accidental Tourist was a 1988 movie adapted from Anne Tyler’s 1985 novel. Macon Leary (William Hurt) writes travel guides for people who don’t like to travel.  Leary doesn’t enjoy traveling either, but of necessity he has to travel to write the guides. I, on the other hand, love to travel.  I love everything about travel except for airports and airplanes, bus trips, train trips and car trips.  I enjoy everything else, except I  don’t like staying in hotels all that much.  I have not always been this way, but I am now.  But like Macon Leary, when I live in Georgia and my immediate family lives in California and Indiana, I travel quite often.

Last week I found a travel documentary on Netflix called Expedition Happiness.  This young German couple, Felix Starck and Selima Taibi, converted a school  bus into a “tiny house on wheels.”  Felix, Selima and their dog  then hit the road from the eastern US through Canada, down the west coast of the US and south through Mexico. Felix provided most of the narration and commentary. Selima was the camera operator and provided the incredibly beautiful soundtrack with her original music. Needless to say, besides the extraordinary scenery and people they encountered, they also experienced many problems and mishaps along the way. But since I was watching a documentary of their journey, I knew that it all turned out all right. However, I still felt their pain when they encountered particularly difficult circumstances.

The documentary provided much food for thought for me.  I had pen and paper handy and wrote down many of the quotable quotes from the film.

“What if none of it works out?  I know it’s going to work out just fine", Felix said early in their adventure.

“There are two reasons to celebrate today.”  No matter what happened, they always found something to celebrate.

“Let’s see how it goes”, Felix  said quite often.

“We got lucky again”, is what Felix said after they surpassed a difficult “roadblock” (literally).

Once when they were surrounded by armed law enforcement officials, Felix said, “I’m scared as hell. I’m shaking. This is bad. But I’m still positive I guess.”

When they got in situations where the local culture was uncomfortable and sometimes threatening, Felix said, “We need to be respectful of the circumstances and be thankful for the hospitality.”

While in Mexico their bus broke down (not the first time). They were stranded on the side of the road.  Felix said, “ I don’t know what to do. I have no tools to fix this. It can’t be any worse.”  Then when a truck pulled along side of them he said, “We just met a truck driver. He said to ‘follow me’. We are doing that right now. I hope he’s taking us to a mechanic.”   That is what happened. Felix responded, “After like ten minutes and five  bucks we were back on the road.” This was not the first time people came to their rescue.  Of this frequent travel phenomenon, Felix said, “With their help, everything kinda worked out.”

When I was about sixteen years old these words came to me. "If everything is going to be OK, then everything's OK." Maybe my sixteen year old self was trying to tell me something. At that age, except for trips with my family, I had done little traveling. So my words were speaking to something larger than travel.  They were a gestalt for my life. Obviously, if I accept my words for my life, they include travel as well.  

Meanwhile, as Felix said, "There are two reasons to celebrate today". 1. I'm safe and warm and dry. 2. I'm not going anywhere.