Why I Don’t Agree with “Enjoy the Journey, Not the Destination”

You ask an average adult what they would do if they came upon a windfall gain, call it the lottery, for example, the answers you would get, unsurprisingly, will be very limited – buy a big house, pay off all mortgages, travel the world, get a Porsche 911, buy a helicopter, buy a private jet, etc. 

Travel the world, in my experience, appears on almost 

everyone’s list. Mine too.

The minute I hear a travel plan is in the works, I immediately register the emotions of excitement, anticipation, and happiness. 

Dread doesn’t take long to knock at the door, though. 

No thanks to motion sickness!

For those of you lucky enough not to know what that is, here’s a little google love for you:

“Motion sickness occurs when your brain can’t make sense of information sent from your eyes, ears and body. Lots of motion — in a car, airplane, boat, or even an amusement park ride — can make you feel queasy, clammy or sick to your stomach. Some people vomit. Being carsick, seasick or airsick is motion sickness.”

You can see why it can convert the exciting world of travel to something quite the opposite for people suffering from motion sickness. 

A seemingly harmless road trip in an air-conditioned car can quickly become the ‘Remember-the-night-you-puked-your-lungs-out?’ 

Even an idyllic evening of swinging in the park can make for an awful experience. 

I know some folks who have gotten it much worse than me. But of course, I wouldn’t compare my situation with theirs. Where’s the fun in that? I will compare my case with those of the people who have got it all going for them, i.e., those who don’t have this freaking ailment.

Now, I didn’t know that I had this problem until high school- where one day, on a school trekking trip 2 hours away, revealed to me and to my dear friend sitting next to me the joys of motion sickness. Her shining new shoes and uniform got the worst of it. 

I will spare you the graphic details, but it took me a few months to get back to being able to talk to her again. Puke doesn’t look good on shiny shoes, you know.

After researching a lot and going through many remedies, I have found some that help me combat some of the effects, but my journey still needs constraints. I can not read on my trips, whether by road, sea, train, or plane. All the classics that I thought I would read on my trips somewhere. 

Thankfully, I can listen to music without feeling pukish, which helps with short trips. 

Guess the people who said ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ weren’t wrong. I have realized that the same motion that makes me puke, also easily lulls me into sleep if I let it. 

Lo and behold! My average sleep hours of 8 hours a day immediately increase to 8.067387 hours a day. I tell you, every extra minute of sleep helps. 

You know well what I mean if you are one of those people that specialize in waking up at the last minute every morning.

My love for travel has not diminished, despite the constraints, the journey might bring. My only gripe is with the people that said – enjoy the journey, not the destination.

They surely didn’t suffer from motion sickness.