BOWAworld

How Are You Getting There?

by Bert Oliva

So my team and I have been on our road tour for a little less than two weeks and though the time hasn’t been that long, we have been tested like crazy.

We’ve had not one but two flat tires on our trailer (I’ve never even had one before). The running lights on our trailer shorted out at night on a busy interstate. We made a wrong turn and got stuck on train tracks. I lost my wallet. The alarm on the Swag Wagon started going crazy while we were driving, and then every time we opened any door for 3 days after. We lost LJ without his phone inside a Walmart and had to page him at customer service. Dylan stepped in dog poop while walking the dogs and tracked it all over Swag before realizing it. Sabrina sprayed air freshener in my eyes accidentally while I was driving to deal with the smell. Gizmo the dog peed on LJ’s bed and when we washed the mattress cover it melted in the dryer. We lit a fire in our cabin’s fireplace at Lake Murray (which took us Miami folk almost 45 minutes to get lit), only to discover our flue was damaged when the entire cabin filled with smoke. Our heater in our trailer stopped working yesterday night and we were all so frozen we couldn’t get out from under our covers for over an hour and started our day way later than we needed to. We even hit a bump on a curvy mountain road and everything went flying in our trailer: TV off the wall, table, and everything out of our cupboards. And my kids forgot their ID’s and were almost not allowed to get on the plane to fly home to be able to make it to school yesterday.

These are just a few of the things that have happened on our trip so far. And I’m sure there will be more before our trip is over. I’m not going to be dishonest and say there haven’t been moments where I’ve gotten angry or frustrated on this trip. But, I haven’t allowed those emotions to take over and ruin the whole trip. We’ve had some amazing times thus far and I know there’s more to come. We’ve even laughed during a good amount of the trials on this trip.

As I’ve reflected back on my trip so far, I’ve realized it’s a perfect metaphor for life. There’s no way to go back, you must keep moving forward. There are times when it feels like everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Times when you feel like a victim and that everything is happening to you. Times when you want to give up and just hide under the warm covers of your bed till the next day. But you can’t, life continues and you have no choice but to continue to experience it for as long as you’re on the journey.

The question is, how do you want to experience it? Do you want to laugh and joke and have some great times in the process or do you want to feel sorry for yourself and make you and everyone around you miserable? I choose the former. I choose to have fun and enjoy my experiences with the people on the journey with me and see what there is to learn from each one of them. What do you choose? Life is going to test you no matter what you do. You might as well enjoy the ride.

Live Life,

Bert Oliva