What I learned from my cat about travel anxiety

“Accept each challenge as an opportunity to transform yourself. Never allow yourself to be discouraged.” – Paulo Coelho //

It is interesting how you can find meaning in normal things that happen in your daily life when you are looking for it.  A few weeks before starting my trip, during a day when I was feeling a bit of travel anxiety, I took our cat Porridge to the vet for a check-up related to a small scab on his chin.  Bringing cats to the vet is always an ordeal, because they need to be transported in pet carriers, which for you non-pet owners out there is basically a small portable enclosure you can carry a cat in to keep him from running off.

Anyway, I’m trying to put Porridge into the carrier, and he is struggling against my will.  Finally he gives up in defeat and I am able to secure him in the carrier and bring him down to our car.  As I start driving to the vet, he starts whining.  Meow.  Meow.  Meow.  This goes on for 2, 5, 10 minutes.  Constant and consistent agitation.  To him, I have disrupted his status quo.  On a typical day, he’ll wake up, stretch, move over to our couch, fall asleep, wake up, eat, walk around, stretch, move to our bed, fall asleep, wake up, eat, …. well, you get the drill.  He has a routine.  And today in bringing him out to the vet, he was not happy, and he let me know that.  The thing is, through all the discomfort, what he didn’t know, but I did, was that he was going to the vet, and the vet would ultimately help him be better, more healthy.  Of course, when he got to the vet, he was perfectly fine, realized it wasn’t so bad to be there, and was playful, even.

As my trip approached, I had some trepidation and anxiety around the idea of traveling on my own for 3 months.   Being on my own.  Without friends and family.  For an extended period of time.  In an unfamiliar culture.

Usually it was just in the back of my mind, but sometimes it came crashing out to the front as well.  When that happened, what calmed me was remembering that, like with Porridge, these feelings were normal.  I have been in my own routine – wake up, go to work, come home, spend time with my wife, hang out with friends on the weekend, repeat – that is being disrupted.  Now that I’ve arrived in Southeast Asia, things are going perfectly fine, and it has been a lot of fun (more details to come).  And additionally, like Porridge, I’ll be a better me as a result of my trip when I get back home.

Lessons Learned

• You can find meaning and life lessons in everyday experiences if you are looking for it

• Experiences that are disruptive to your routine will be fought against by your mind – your mind may even tell you what you are doing is a bad idea, and to back out.  But if you fight through that, and go through with the experience, it will be better than you think, and you’ll come out of it a better person (or feline    )

Have you had any experiences that involved a big shift from your daily routine?  How did you manage through the change?