The Many Paths of YOLO

     Texting has created a language all to itself, a world of acronyms that, for people of my age, either needs its own form of dictionary or a live-in teen-ager.  LOL, LMAO, SMH, all easily energized with a well placed F (If you really mean it!!).  One of my favorites is YOLO, You Only LIve Once.  I have found myself leaning a little more on this philosophy as I get older, which I suppose is natural.  But, I’ve also found it to be more complex than what it seems at face value, allowing for a number of paths, depending on the amount of spontaneity you are willing to risk.

     The easiest path would be the spur-of-the-moment, devil-may-care, last-second decision that some find satisfying.  It's a high risk, high reward scenario that Vegas thrives on.  The higher the risk, the higher the reward, with the higher chance of something going sideways.  It can produce the huge adrenaline shot that some people crave, as well as paralyzing anxiety that most do not (explaining why I don’t find myself in this situation often).  The only experience I’ve had with this scenario was about twenty years ago when my sister called me on the Friday afternoon that marked our long awaited April vacation. She said she and my brother-in-law found a townhouse in Myrtle Beach, and that we were invited to go along.  The catch is that we had to leave in a couple hours and drive through the night. Having not packed anything.  With a seven-year-old.  And a four-year-old.  And a baby just under a year old.  My wife and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and said yes.  It was exhausting, but when we finally arrived in South Carolina, it turned out to be a beautiful place, perfect for children, and a destination we would go back to for years to follow.

 

     The safest, most time consuming path involves a lot of thought and planning.  Pick a goal, plan how to fund it, save and save and save over a great amount of years, and then splurge before death (hopefully) on the trip, car, house, etc., of a lifetime.  I’ve known some people who have taken this path, and it has its own spotty track record.  For those who reached their goal, it can be a very rewarding, life affirming, this-is-why-I-worked-so-hard-all-of-my-life benchmark.  It also runs its own risks.  The long journey holds no guarantees that you will live long enough to reach the end.  You also run the risks of life events throwing a gauntlet of obstacles, like a series of speed bumps, that will continue to slow down your progress to the point of ending all enthusiasm for the reward, and calling off the goal altogether.  I don’t have a ton of experience in this department either.  We may have, at one point, entertained the idea of retiring to a little place on the water somewhere.  That was in 1994, when we started out.  Real estate prices, climate change, and insurance premiums conspired over the decades to smother that dream in its sleep.  So, the log cabin in Uxbridge it is.

      The third path, and the one that has worked very well for me in my life, is a compromise of the two.  A middle path, if you will, that allows you to take some risk, but if done properly, can lead to big rewards with little blowback.  I was brought up on the safe, frugal side of the road.  A place where you saved your money, insured everything, drove the speed limit, collected coupons, and never overpaid for something.  My wife grew up in a much more open-spending, worry-about-it-later, you-get-what-you-pay-for environment.  Inevitably, when we first got married, this led to any number of economic arguments about living life safely vs. living life to the fullest, and we eventually hit the sweet spot of compromise.

     I remember vividly sitting in my classroom at the old Uxbridge High School, a social studies teacher finishing his third year.  It was 1995, and I was in my room alone after the final bell, finding myself staring at a huge map of the United States.  I looked at all the places that I had never seen, feeling a little empty.  All the places that seemed impossibly far away and out of reach taunted me.  Chicago, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, the Redwood Forest.  I was teaching about all these places, but had never experienced any of them.  

     And then a switch flipped.  A dawn of realization that we could just get in a car and go see them all.  We were in our second year of marriage, no children, and a full summer vacation ahead of us.  What is stopping us from doing this?  Only ourselves (and potentially my car, which was in such bad shape that my parents generously demanded we take theirs instead).  We left our, dog, cats and fish in the capable hands of my brother, and hit the road for three weeks.  No cell phones, no GPS.  Just a Rand-McNally atlas and some American Express Travelers Checks  We saw everything, or at least it felt like we did.  It was one of the best experiences of my life, and we have never forgotten or regretted any of it.  The money and time spent created lasting memories and scratched a big itch.  It also made me a better teacher.

 

     Fast forward to the Fall of 2018.  We’ve reached middle age, have four children between the ages of 11 and 22, two dogs, and not a small amount of student debt for our kids.  Our 25th anniversary  was approaching, and I wanted it to be special, so we considered a trip to some place in Europe, maybe France.  But in a situation similar to my classroom in 1995, I found myself looking at vacation destinations on my laptop.  A voice in my head suddenly and loudly screamed, “Bora Bora!!”,  a place my wife had proclaimed as the absolute top of her bucket list.  I proposed a summer of 2019 trip to the South Pacific, and maybe even a stop at Maui on the way home (might as well while we’re in the area!).  When she started breathing again, she agreed to it and we started planning.

      The trip was amazing, living up to every high bar expectation that we had for it.  Hut over the water.  Swimming with sharks and stingrays.  Dinner at the original Bloody Mary’s.  We didn’t want to leave.  We then found ourselves in Maui, finding a restaurant called Captain Jack’s in the little, but much sought after destination of Lahaina.  We ate dinner overlooking the town and water.  Visited the famous banyan tree across the street.  Soaking in the vibe as much as we could.

 

     This trip was a big financial investment for two teachers.  We did doubt and debate the wisdom of taking such a financial risk at this time of our lives.  The best argument I had at the time was that I didn’t want to be in my 70’s when I got to experience such amazing places.  These are places for a younger, more energetic crowd.  And there is also no guarantee of living long enough to get there.  But, validation hit us like a truck just seven months later when the world shut down for a Covid-19 pandemic.  If we had put this off even just one year, everything would have been different, as anyone who has traveled since can attest.  Validation Part II hit us on August 8, 2023 (my birthday) when we watched Lahaina burn to the ground on TV.  All the places we visited and enjoyed were literal dust and ashes now.  The only silver lining was that the banyan tree somehow survived and is showing some signs of recovery. Tragic. Yet, for us, a bit less tragic because we experienced them before tragedy hit.  Some reward for the risk.

 

     Where does YOLO rate in our history?  Did George Washington use YOLO as his motto before attacking and beating the British at Yorktown?  Did the ‘49er write YOLO on the sides of their wagons as they headed to California for the gold rush?  Did Geronimo yell “YOLO!!” before riding into battle?  Did Bill Belichick say YOLO to his coaches before going for it with a rookie named Tom Brady in Super Bowl XXXVI?  Do you cry "YOLO!" before you try the Walmart sushi?  YOLO can mean life and death if you take enough risk.

     YOLO is a very personal journey.  Each individual has to weigh the risk/reward ratio before deciding to go for it or not.  There will be successes and failures, miracles and tragedies, rights and wrongs.  But there does seem to be a common thread to every story, and that is the 0% completion rates for all shots not taken.  It does seem that the ultimate tragedy is going through an entire life and never taking that jump at all.  To never experience the thrill of winning when you could have lost.  I would advocate that every person, at least once,  take some calculated risks.  Experience people, places, and things before they are gone, because, after all, You Only Live Once.