There is something strange about the trip home. On the way to somewhere, you’re buzzing with anticipation, watching the clock, checking the gate and thinking about everything you’re finally going to see. Your brain arrives at the destination long before your body does. The trip home is different. By then, the pictures are already on your phone, the souvenirs are stuffed into your luggage, your feet are tired and your brain is trying to sort several days of experiences into some kind of order.

That’s where I was when I left California.

I had packed a ridiculous amount of living into a few days. I had flown over Hoover Dam and Lake Mead and watched the colors of the Mojave stretch beneath the airplane. I had walked Hollywood Boulevard, stood outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, seen the Hollywood sign and driven down Sunset Boulevard. I had gone to Disneyland, traveled through Beverly Hills and Bel Air, wound through canyon roads and finally stood beside the Pacific Ocean with the salt air on my face.

I had collected sand, shells and ocean water like the witchy little magpie I apparently am. I had eaten good food, laughed, taken enough photographs to document a small civilization and, most importantly, spent time with my sisters.

It was wonderful.

And I was ready to go home.

Somewhere between California and Arizona, though, I realized the most important things I was bringing home weren’t tucked into my suitcase at all.

Sometimes You Have to Leave Home to See It Again

I couldn’t wait to see Ronnie and my furbabies. I wanted my own bed and my familiar surroundings. I wanted to wake up in the morning, grind fresh coffee, smell it filling the kitchen, pour in heavy cream and make myself an English muffin or whatever else sounded good. I wanted to walk through the house opening the curtains and letting that bright Arizona light pour through the windows.

I wanted my music playing. I wanted the familiar sounds of animals moving around the house. I wanted to check on the fish, wander into my office, fuss with my plants and do all those tiny things that normally aren’t important enough to mention.

Except suddenly they were.

That’s the funny thing about ordinary life. You live inside it every day, and eventually you stop noticing how much of it you actually love. The coffee becomes just coffee. Your morning routine becomes automatic. The animals under your feet become part of the normal household chaos, and the person sitting beside you on the couch becomes such a familiar presence that it’s easy to forget how comforting that presence really is.

Then you leave for a while.

Coming home made me realize that those ordinary things aren’t little at all. They’re the pieces that make up my life, and I really, really like my life.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what I want to change. I want to get out more, grow Vividly Rae, read more books, become stronger and more active, have adventures with Ronnie, travel and intentionally romanticize my life. Somewhere in all that planning, though, it’s easy to accidentally start thinking that creating a fuller life means the one you have isn’t enough.

California taught me something different.

I don’t need a different life. I want to become more present in the one I already have.

We Need to Slow the Fuck Down

This may be the biggest lesson of the entire trip.

We are in such a damn hurry. We rush to work, rush home, rush through errands and sometimes even rush through the things we’re supposedly doing for fun. We get through Monday because we’re waiting for Friday. We count down to vacations, holidays, weekends and eventually retirement. We’re constantly trying to reach the next thing.

At some point during this trip, I started wondering: Where the hell are we all going?

Because while we’re busy trying to get there, our actual lives are happening.

California made me notice how differently we experience the world when we’re somewhere new. I looked out the window constantly. I noticed palm trees and mountains, houses tucked into hillsides, strange plants, old buildings and roads I’d never traveled. I stared at the Pacific Ocean. I watched the landscape change beneath the airplane. Everything caught my attention because everything was new to me.

Meanwhile, someone who has lived there for years might drive past those exact same things without even noticing them.

I understand that because I do it here.

I’ve lived in Arizona long enough that things capable of blowing someone’s mind on their first visit have become part of the scenery. Saguaros are everywhere. The mountains are simply there. Another spectacular desert sunset turns the sky orange, pink, lavender and gold, and sometimes I barely glance at it because I’m thinking about dinner or what I need to do tomorrow.

But imagine seeing a giant saguaro for the first time. Imagine looking toward those mountains if you grew up somewhere completely different. Imagine watching an Arizona sunset when you’ve never seen the desert sky explode with those colors.

You’d probably lose your damn mind.

That realization taught me something about being on the other side of travel, too. If someone comes to visit you, remember that the place you’ve seen a thousand times may be completely new to them. Slow down. Let them look. Let them take the picture. Pull over occasionally. Give them time to stare at something you’ve stopped seeing years ago.

Better yet, look at it with them.

Their excitement might remind you that the thing you’ve been ignoring is actually spectacular.

And why wait for visitors? We can do this ourselves. Take a different road through your own town. Walk around somewhere you’ve only ever driven through. Go inside that weird little shop you’ve passed fifty times. Look at the architecture. Notice what grows beside the road. Watch the clouds move over the mountains. Take the picture even though you’ve lived there for years.

Become a tourist in your own town occasionally.

I bet there’s beauty and magic all around us that we’ve simply stopped seeing.

Savor the Damn Thing

Maybe noticing isn’t quite enough, either. I think we need to relearn how to savor things.

There’s a difference.

Noticing is realizing your coffee tastes good. Savoring is sitting your ass down long enough to actually drink it while it’s hot.

We rush through things we supposedly enjoy. Meals become fuel stops between activities. Vacations become itineraries we race through because we need to fit everything in. We take a picture to prove we were somewhere and immediately start moving toward the next thing.

What if we stayed for a minute?

Eat good food and actually taste it. Sit at the table. Talk. Laugh. Notice the smell coming from the kitchen and the texture of the food. Enjoy that first bite instead of already thinking about where you’re going afterward.

And please, eat more than once a day. Your body is not an annoying inconvenience interrupting your itinerary.

I came home wanting to savor more than food, though. I want to savor conversations and drives, mornings and music, the ocean and the desert, laughter and quiet. I want to sit beside someone I love without feeling like every minute needs to accomplish something.

Not every experience needs to become productive.

Sometimes experiencing it is enough.

Get Your Wonder Back

Children are spectacularly good at something adults seem determined to unlearn: wonder.

A kid can pick up a rock and study the thing like they’ve just discovered an artifact from an ancient civilization. Meanwhile, an adult is standing five feet away saying, “Put that down. Come on. We have to go.”

Go where?

Seriously. Where are we going that’s so damn important that we can’t look at the rock?

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we become very serious people. We have schedules and bills, laundry and appointments, groceries to buy and things that need fixing. Obviously, we can’t spend twelve hours examining rocks, but I don’t think adulthood should require us to stop being delighted by things.

I want to be delighted.

I want to stand beside the ocean and still think, Holy shit. I want to collect seashells. I want to stare out an airplane window. I want to notice strange little things, ask questions, wander into places because I’m curious and occasionally take the long road simply because I don’t know what’s around the next curve.

Maybe the magic didn’t disappear when we grew up.

Maybe we just got too busy to notice it.

That goes hand in hand with something else I’ve decided I want back: my youthfulness.

Not my youth. I don’t want to be 26 again. I’ve already done that.

I’m 56 years old, and yes, my body occasionally submits formal complaints about activities it once performed without consulting me. That’s fine. Getting older is real. Getting older and becoming old in your spirit, however, are two very different things.

I am done using “I’m too old” as an automatic reason not to do something.

Too old to travel? Says who? Too old to get ridiculously excited about Disneyland? Absolutely not. Too old to dance around the kitchen?

Do you hear me, Ronnie? Dance with me.

Dance with me in our kitchen. Dance with me in the house. Dance with me in the backyard. Hell, dance with me in the middle of a store if a good song comes on and we feel like it.

I want us to be those people.

The couple who hears a song in the grocery store and starts dancing beside the cereal while everybody else is trying to decide between Cheerios and Frosted Flakes. The people who laugh at themselves and don’t give a damn who’s watching. The people who are still being silly together years from now because we never decided we were too old to have fun.

And while we’re at it, I’m not too old to try something new, laugh too loudly, wear something fun, start a new hobby, change direction or begin again.

Bullshit.

Youthfulness isn’t a birth year. It’s curiosity and playfulness. It’s laughing until your stomach hurts. It’s getting excited about something. It’s still wanting to know what’s around the corner. It’s having books you want to read and places you want to see. It’s being willing to look a little ridiculous because you’re having too much fun to care.

I want to be a big kid at heart for as long as possible.

Wear the Damn Thing

California unexpectedly taught me something about clothes, too.

I watched people everywhere I went, and people wore everything. Different styles, colors, shapes, shoes, jewelry and combinations. Some were dressed up. Some were dressed down. Some looked like they’d spent an hour deciding what to wear, and some appeared to have grabbed whatever was closest to the bed.

And somehow the Earth kept spinning.

It made me realize how much time we waste wondering whether we’re supposed to wear something. Am I too old for this? Does someone my age wear that? Is this flattering enough? What will people think?

Who cares?

Wear what makes you feel like yourself. Wear the dress, jeans, boots, weird jewelry, bright thing or head-to-toe black. If you walk past a mirror and think, Yep, there I am, you’ve probably figured it out.

Your body isn’t a mannequin you’re decorating for other people’s approval. It’s the body carrying you through this life.

Dress it for yourself.

Compassion Shouldn’t Come With a Financial Test

California also brought home a more serious lesson.

Beautiful places can also experience devastating things. Fires, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters don’t stop at someone’s property line and ask to see a bank statement before deciding whether that person is allowed to suffer.

Money absolutely affects the resources someone has to recover from a disaster. I’m not pretending otherwise. Someone with significant financial resources may have options another family simply doesn’t have.

But money doesn’t make a person incapable of loss.

A wealthy person can lose photographs that cannot be replaced. A celebrity can lose a home filled with memories. Someone can lose a neighborhood, possessions, beloved places, pets, a sense of safety or pieces of their personal history. Fear doesn’t suddenly stop being fear because there’s money in the bank.

I think we need more compassion before deciding who is entitled to be devastated.

The same goes for saying, “Well, they chose to live there.”

People don’t normally pick a place to live because they’re hoping to experience a natural disaster someday. They live places because their families are there, their jobs are there, their friends are there or because it’s simply home. Every part of the country has its risks, and nature isn’t something human beings completely control.

Sometimes something terrible happens to another human being.

We don’t always need to determine whether they’ve passed some imaginary test before we’re willing to have empathy for them.

Sometimes we can simply care.

Plans Can Change Without Ruining Everything

Not everything on this trip went according to plan.

Some things happened exactly as I’d imagined. Other things didn’t happen at all. Plans changed. People got tired. Life did what life always does and refused to follow the itinerary perfectly.

The trip was still wonderful.

That’s something I want to remember at home, too. Plans are useful, but sometimes we hold onto them so tightly that we miss the experience we’re actually having because we’re comparing it to the experience we expected.

The unexpected road might turn out to be beautiful. The place you end up instead might become a favorite memory. Sometimes the day changes, and instead of fighting it, you adjust.

And sometimes you end up eating scallops beside the Pacific Ocean and decide that’s a pretty damn good day.

I Came Home Wanting More Life

Here’s the funny part: California didn’t satisfy my desire to travel.

It made it worse.

I want to see more places now. I want adventures with Ronnie, little Arizona day trips, weekend drives and random stops. I want to finally explore places we’ve passed a hundred times without stopping. Someday, I want more big trips, too.

But I understand the desire differently now.

I don’t want to travel because I’m trying to escape my life.

I want to travel because I love my life enough to make it bigger.

I want photographs and stories, inside jokes and ridiculous moments. I want meals we talk about years later and memories that begin with, “Remember when we…?”

Then I want to come home.

I want my fresh-ground coffee with heavy cream and something to eat. I want the curtains open and sunlight pouring through the house. I want my music. I want my furbabies and fish and plants and projects. I want Ronnie.

I want adventure and home.

What I Really Brought Back From California

Yes, I brought souvenirs home. I brought my chrysocolla and little Freya statue. I brought sand, shells and Pacific Ocean water. I brought photographs—so many photographs—and stories I’ll probably still be telling years from now.

But the important things didn’t take up any room in my luggage.

I brought home perspective, gratitude and curiosity. I came home appreciating Ronnie, my furbabies, my home and this beautifully ordinary life we’ve built more than I did before I left.

At the same time, I came home hungry for more.

Not the skipped-lunch kind—although seriously, eat lunch.

I mean hungry for life.

I want more laughter and good food. More music and dancing. More books and adventures. More wandering and more sitting still. More curiosity, compassion, noticing and savoring. More moments when I stop whatever I’m doing and think, Holy shit. Look at that.

I want to wear what I want and stop wondering whether I’m too old for something. I want to be a big kid sometimes. I want to give people more compassion and fewer assumptions. I want to remember that plans can change without everything being ruined.

Most of all, I don’t want to rush through my own damn life.

Because romanticizing my life isn’t about creating a life that looks magical.

It’s about being present enough to discover the magic that’s already here.

Sometimes it’s Disneyland or the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it’s a canyon road twisting through the hills, an airplane window overlooking the desert or a plate of food so good you stop talking for a minute.

Sometimes it’s fresh-ground coffee on an ordinary morning while sunlight pours through open curtains, music you love is playing and the creatures who share your home are making noise somewhere nearby.

Both count.

I want adventure and comfort, big trips and ordinary Tuesdays, fancy meals and English muffins. I want new places and familiar ones seen through new eyes. I want to grow older while remaining young at heart.

I want to savor the hell out of all of it.

We’re going to get older whether we participate in our lives or not. Time isn’t going to slow down simply because we’re busy.

So maybe we should.

Stop once in a while. Look around. Eat something delicious and actually taste it. Wear the damn outfit. Turn up the music—and Ronnie, if you’re reading this, this is your reminder to dance with your wife. Laugh too loudly. Take the picture. Look at the rock. Watch the sunset. Go somewhere you’ve never been, and then come home and look at somewhere familiar with new eyes.

Tell people you love them while they’re sitting beside you. Have compassion for someone whose life looks nothing like yours. Let yourself get excited. Forget occasionally that you’re supposed to be a serious, responsible grown-up and be a big kid again.

There is a whole world out there.

And there is a whole life right here.

I don’t want to rush past either one.

California taught me so much more than I expected it to. But maybe the biggest lesson was the simplest.

Slow down, Rae. You’re already living the life you’ve been trying so hard to get to.

Now savor it.