The Longest Day

 

Today was the longest day of our lives, 33 hours.  We saw the sun rise in London and set in San Francisco – leaving London at 1:00 pm and landing in San Francisco at 4:00 pm.

 

If there is one predominant characteristic of this trip, it was that so much of the trip was a unique, first time, experience for us.  Yet at the same time we came to realize that there are others for which these experiences are their common, everyday life.

 

For the pilots, crews, and world travelers who fly the London – San Francisco flights, there is nothing unique or special about having a long day like our day today.

 

Jon worked for a year at learning the French language, and it became something quite difficult, mysterious, and uncommon.  But what struck him once he was actually in France surrounded by people who had grown up speaking French, was that for them French was just their way of communicating with each other.  French was to them - as English is to us - quite common and ordinary.

 

All those quaint villages we cycled through and ooh’ed and ah’ed over – are just places where someone else lives and goes to work and raises families, has friends and lovers.

 

And perhaps that is the most wonderful thing of all.  How we experience our world is influenced by how we filter those experiences in our minds.  Mary Carol and Jon commute every day past the Frank Lloyd Wright Civic Center.  We can choose to see that as just our ordinary existence, or realize that people come from all over the world to see it, and for us to appreciate it with their first-time eyes is still exciting and fun.

 

So, to our friends who have been reading these journals, we hope some of our first-time excitement has come through our writings.  If you have never been to Europe, we hope you’ll have a chance to experience it yourself someday.  If you’ve been many times, or perhaps it is your home, we hope you’ve seen it through our new eyes in a different way.

 

And for all of us wherever we are, we hope this will inspire us to experience our own homes and surroundings with fresh excitement each day – not just at holiday times.