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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Debunking the Mythical Definition of Travel [Part 1 of 2]

Feb 9 Leave a Comment

I’ve been ruminating on these words from Robert Louis Stevenson for several months now: “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

What I hear in his words is simply this: “It doesn’t matter where you go. Just go.”

Stevenson’s words convey the idea that there is great value in the journey, not just in the destination. Great power in getting out of our comfort zones. Great joy in moving and going and doing.

This is precisely why Dan and I chose to make travel a priority in our life together.

I think many people associate travel with luxury and extravagance, and as a result, believe they can’t do it. You can’t really travel if you don’t have X amount of disposable income. You can’t really travel unless your job gives you at least three weeks of vacation time. You can’t really travel after you turn 30. You can’t really travel after you have kids.

There is some truth behind these thoughts. Sure, travel would be so much easier if I had tons of money, vacation time, and no kids. Well, I don’t have kids. So that already makes things easier. But I don’t have tons of money, and I have only two weeks of vacation time. Neither of these challenges makes travel impossible.

What we’re really saying when we claim we can’t travel is that we aren’t willing to prioritize travel. And that’s okay! There are so many good things we can prioritize with our money and time. But I do think that many people believe they can’t travel because they have one or two primary misconceptions:

  1. A misconception about what travel is.
  2. A misconception about our power to choose (I’ll cover this in part two, coming soon.).

A Misconception about What Travel Is

Let’s do a little bit of word association. What comes to mind when you think of travel? Maybe vacations, booking flights, packing (such a headache!), unpacking (a bigger headache!), arranging rides to the airport, expensive dinners out. Perhaps you think of week-long trips to exotic destinations, all-inclusive resorts, fancy European hotels, or Florida beaches. Maybe travel means ski-lift tickets, a huge lodge with a fireplace, and the expenses of gear rental.

Yes, all of these are related to travel. But how would your thinking shift if you expanded your definition of what travel actually is?

First, travel doesn’t have to be extravagant. It can be hostels and hole-in-the-wall cafes, packing your own food and packing in a carry-on (or backpack!), taking public transportation and skipping tourist traps. All you really need to travel is a solid pair of shoes and a backpack.

Second, Dan and I like to think of travel as something that falls under the larger umbrella of adventure. If we have a free evening or weekend, he’ll turn to me with a wide smile and excited eyes and ask, “What kind of adventures do you want to find tonight?”

Adventure doesn’t have to be plane tickets and hotel rooms and cab rides. Adventure is any new, exciting, or remarkable experience. We choose adventure when we go on a bike ride in the forest preserve near our home. We choose adventure when we’re running errands and then stumble upon a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant on their $1 taco and $3 margarita night. We choose adventure when we’re on a vacation and go off the beaten path.

Travel is something we get to do when we save money and plan for it. It’s a good thing, and we love to do it. Travel can be done on a budget and with limited time. It can be one night away, or it can be a week in a foreign country.

Adventure is a mindset. An adventurous way of life allows us to embrace experiences anywhere, anytime—at home, in a nearby town, or halfway across the world.

On Thursday, I’ll share part 2 of this series: how a misconception about our power to choose can prevent us from traveling more often. 

What are your favorite kinds of adventures? I’d love to hear from you below!


PS—You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at @NestedNomad.

Think you can't travel? Consider expanding your definition of what travel can be! From www.thenestednomad.com

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Filed Under: Simple Living & Minimalism, Travel Tagged With: adventure, backpacking, resorts, travel

« The Challenges of Roots, Wings, and Defining This Blog
Wielding Our Spending Power Wisely [Part 2 of 2] »




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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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