Wednesday 11 April 2018

Travelling

I'm travelling this week. Travelling rather than on holiday.

For various reasons, we chose to home educate our children and that gives opportunities, like this lunchtime, having just eaten lunch surrounded by the beautiful naturalistically inspired Gaudi inspired landscape. I had decided the next stop was the Picasso Museum. My children thought it should be back to the youth hostel for an hour or two on their tablet computers, then to the beach.

We're three years into home education, so there was no real contest. Listening to two of my autistic kids explaining Picasso and Gaudi's work as though it was obvious what was going on was fantastic. However, I deviate...

Eldest child had put forward this was a holiday, hence the beach. I say this is a field trip. A trip...therefore a chance to travel.

We see a trip to the airport too often as being about the destination.

Travel is about the journey. Seeing and experiencing every step of the way and growing while you do.

Gaudi's work makes more sense if you see the process, from idea through drawing to complete object. Picasso's later art... the stuff we associate most with him, with irrational, child like images, makes sense when you see his earlier work and associate it with the changes in technology that were happening at the same time. Unlike great master's of the past, if you wanted a representative likeness in the 20th Century, you could just use a camera. Picasso said he painted what he thought, not what he saw. The movement in the painting especially made sense if your saw his sculptures, which gave different impressions when viewed from different angles.

Listening to my children speak about this art has changed how I will listen to them in the future.

Too often we rush past the pleasure of the journey for the perceived destination. Work, work, work... then a holiday lying still, then work some more. Exploring the beginning of potential relationships isn't about enjoying where we are, it's about wanting to be somewhere else... coupled up and potentially married...or at least committed. And then what?

"You have reached your destination." Time to sit still, like knackered holiday makers on the beach, then start moving again.

When life is a series of destinations, you miss the anticipation and planning, the unexpected sights and sounds of the journey and arrive as a completed action, not as part of a bigger whole.

I am travelling. I don't know my destination, but I am all about the journey. I don't want to miss a second of the learning and seeing and doing I am experiencing as part of that trip with my husband. equally, I have realised I missed out on parts of the journey I should have been savouring, back when I was younger and single, because there is no going back, no do-overs now I am committed with metal, children, a mortgage and a well invested heart.


WickedWednesday



3 comments:

  1. Sounds like fun and well done on mastering the traveling-with-kids thing. Ours is currently stuck in that "where's the wifi?" stage.

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  2. I love this - it's about the journey, not the destination. Beautiful!

    Rebel xox

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  3. This is such a good reminder to enjoy the journey as I think that life can often seem to steer us onto the next thing, as you point out. As a teacher it is also interesting to read about how the home education works and the gains that it obviously has for you and for your children. 😊

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