Follow Travel Dreams or Listen to Your Biological Clock? Choices...
"Shut up, biological clock, SHUT UP!!!"
This was my Twitter "tweet" which earned me the most re-tweets in a twenty-four hour span this month of any tweet I wrote. It seems people can relate!
"When you have children," beamed the husband of one of my generous Spanish hosts, "it is amazing. You suddenly understand the full meanings of words such as "Love" and "Sacrifice" and "Responsibility" that you never fully got before."
"That's all well and good," I said, "but when you're a single woman in your late twenties, you may be rather excited to get to that stage of life, but you can't just LEAP into it without considering your life partner carefully, or your life in general!"
"If you believe in fate as I do," said my host's husband, "it's quite relaxing. All you have to do is wait, and it all will come to you."
But try as one might to breathe deeply and wait for fate, some of the time it is not relaxing at all. You ogle chubby infants on the subway until their mothers run away. Your heart randomly races with panic that you're wasting precious ovum shelf-life time. You read into innocent things people say to mean: "Your life choices are ruining your opportunities to find love and a stable future!"
Yet there's not much you can do but keep dating, keep looking, and keep living-- without being too desperate, of course.
"Do NOT have kids!" sighed an utterly frazzled Spanish friend as she piled her screaming children into the car. "It's so good that you're single and traveling around, untethered!"
And this brings us to the Ghanaian saying I keep thinking about: "Want want, no get. Get get, no want."
Or my friend Maria's take on it: "Want want no get, then get... then remember all things about wanting what you had before."
Full disclosure: this quote came from a G-Chat conversation we had as Maria calmed me down from a raging freak-out that I was living my life wrong and positively murdering my chances for successful life-partner-finding by doing this whole endless travel thing... especially since I'm considering extending the travels for a second year.
Maria soothed my tizzy by revealing her own experience. "I literally spent the years between 25 and 30 NOT traveling because I thought I should be looking for a husband," she typed. "And of course, didn't find one then... and I didn't travel either. So, there we are. Now I'm 32 and in a good relationship... and thus now I'm bound to Boston."
She concluded, making me smile from my head to my toes: "Long story short, don't worry about your uterus. Do what you love and the rest will find you. That is my fortune cookie advice for the day."
Wise, wise words, Maria! All in good time. Let's embrace the world in all its present glory and enjoy what's right here, right now.
Photo Note: All the pretty pictures in this article were taken in Madrid, Spain.
2013 and 2016 update: Pregnancy and new mom life!
The author, Lillie Marshall, is a 6-foot-tall National Board Certified Teacher of English, fitness fan, and mother of two who has been a public school educator since 2003. She launched Around the World “L” Travel and Life Blog in 2009, and over 4.2 million readers have now visited this site. Lillie also runs TeachingTraveling.com and DrawingsOf.com. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter, and follow @WorldLillie on social media!
I had to click over from your pregnancy anouncement post with the title of the post - my. thoughts. exactly. I live in Spain and have my partner (six years my senior and a combat pilot), my mother-in-law, my brothers-in-law and even my own gynocologist trying to coax me to get pregnant. I'm 27 and far from ready, que me dejéis en paz!!
Looking forward to your adventures with baby. Sending big hugs from Spain!
Haha-- I love that Spanish expression! :) Good luck with crafting your own journey, and thanks for your well wishes!
Thanks for all your wonderful replies, and here's the miraculous update: I am now engaged to a wonderful guy who I met the week after returning home from around the world travel! Here's the full, amazing story: https://www.aroundtheworldl.com/2011/11/13/we-are-engaged-or-how-travel-can-find-and-build-love/
Hahaha; and look at you now, it all worked out. Not just in your romantic life, the grass is always greener.
On one hand: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
On the other: Approach that aspect like you have nothing to lose because you really don't have anything to lose.
The whole life partner thing will come when it's damn good and ready to come. Patience will pay off in the long run.
Oh man... these comments are so deliciously helpful and calming. Thank you for sharing your wisdom!!!
Who says you need to have a life partner? I know lots of women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who never married and are actually happier than many of my married friends! Similarly, most of the folks I know who never had kids are much happier than those with kids. Coincidence? I think not: http://kottke.org/10/07/parents-are-less-happy-than-non-parents
I'm sure your uterus will be okay for another year (or two...or...)
Travel doesn't necessarily keep you from meeting the one. On the contrary, it might just bring you together! Or, if this concept of "the one" turns out not to be true, you certainly meet a lot more people when you're out and about, and maybe one of them will turn out to be a suitable partner. Who's to say your life partner lives in Boston??
I was absolutely not looking for a husband when I studied abroad but that's when I found him. So, you just never know.
Your friend Maria has wise, hilarious words! Embrace what you're doing right now because it's an incredible opportunity! Whatever's meant to be, is meant to be and it will happen in time. :)
Nice post. As a man we, or at least I, felt something similar and often thought that changing countries every two years and traveling all the time would condemn me to single life forever. Not a bad thing if that is what you want.
I think your Spanish friend is right though. I kept doing what I love and met my wife in the most unlikely of places, Timor-Leste (East Timor). It was during a time of political instability and a UN peacekeeping operation was in charge of policing. Now we are married and lucky for me she enjoys traveling and living abroad as much as me (we live in Kosovo now). Just a positive story that it does work out...nice blog by the way :)
Xoxoxo :-D
Lillie - great post as usual!
Let me preface my comment by saying that surprisingly enough, I don't own a uterus. And not just because I try to travel iight. However ... I can identify with a lot of what you're saying. I'm a few years older than you, and also sometimes feel that the life choices I have made (travelling all the time, moving countries regularly) have contributed to the fact that I'm single.
Like your Spanish friend, though, I really do believe that if you believe in fate, all good things will come in the end. In the meantime, I'm making the most of the freedom and flexibility that inherently comes with having to worry about nobody other than myself.
As I've said many times, I'd rather be happy and single than married and miserable, and I really believe it's so important that 'the one' shares a similar outlook on life to me when it comes to the importance of seeing the world, lack of materialism and so on. When I meet her, I'm pretty sure I'm going to know! Until then, on with the show!
So - want to go for a drink some time? :-D