Life Is Now: The Journeys That Never Happened

Updated October 2026.

Two lives, four weeks, and the plans that never had a chance to become memories.

We’ll Do It When We’re Older

How often have you heard that?

We’ll travel when we retire.

We’ll finally see the world when we have more time.

We’ll do all those things we’ve been dreaming about – later.

My father had plans like that.

He grew up and lived in East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, where ordinary citizens couldn’t simply book a holiday to London, Paris or New York.

Travelling to Western countries was generally out of reach for most people until retirement age, apart from exceptional circumstances.

So my father looked towards the future.

One day, when he and my mother were pensioners, they might finally be able to travel and discover places they had only dreamed about.

There was just one problem.

He never got anywhere near retirement.

Thirty-Five Years Is Not Much of a Lifetime

My father died in an accident when he was just 35 years old.

My mother was 34.

Suddenly, she was alone with two children.

All those plans for the future were gone.

Not postponed.

Gone.

As a child, I couldn’t fully understand what that meant. Children experience loss differently. They know someone is missing, but the full meaning of all those years that will never happen often becomes clearer only much later.

And our family hadn’t even reached the end of that terrible chapter.

Four Weeks Later

Just four weeks after my father’s death, my maternal grandmother also died in an accident.

She had been planning a major change in her life.

Her intention was to move from East Germany to the Federal Republic of Germany, where her own mother lived.

Before that, she wanted to take a short holiday.

But she never completed those plans.

Within four weeks, my mother had lost her husband and her mother.

Two accidents. Two lives ended. Two futures erased.

I sometimes think about how ordinary their plans must have seemed when they made them.

Nothing particularly extravagant.

Just things people hope to do.

And yet neither of them had the chance.

What I Understood Later

As I grew older, those events became an important part of how I looked at the world.

I had seen, within my own family, how suddenly life could change.

How easily tomorrow could disappear.

And how dangerous it could be to assume that there would always be another opportunity.

I came to recognise that life wasn’t something to be put permanently on hold.

Years later, when I took my mother to places such as New York, London, Australia and New Zealand, I was doing something that my father had once hoped to experience with her.

I can’t know exactly what he would have thought about those journeys.

But I do know how happy they made Mum.

Keeping the Stories

Mum died on 20 July 2026, here in the Philippines. Now there can be no more journeys together, but the ones we shared haven’t disappeared.

Writing about them in Lizz & I is one way I can preserve those stories: the places we went, the moments we shared and the happiness they brought her.

My father’s journeys never happened. My grandmother’s plans never became memories. With Mum, I was fortunate enough to make some of those memories while we still could.

You Don’t Need to Travel Halfway Around the World

When I encourage people to follow their travel dreams, I don’t necessarily mean they should immediately book a flight to the other side of the planet. Not everyone has that opportunity. And not everyone wants to.

Sometimes an adventure can begin much closer to home. A weekend away. A place you’ve always wanted to visit but somehow never found the time for. Or simply spending a day doing something different with someone you love.

It’s not about collecting passport stamps or proving how many countries you’ve visited. It’s about experiencing something that matters to you, rather than waiting indefinitely for the calendar to become more cooperative.

The Future Is Not a Reservation

I’m not suggesting that everybody should resign from their job tomorrow, empty their savings account and buy a one-way ticket to somewhere tropical. Although I must admit, the idea does occasionally sound rather attractive.

We have responsibilities. Bills need paying. Plans need making.

But I do believe we should be careful about continually postponing the things that matter to us.

Especially time with people we love.

Their stories became part of my own understanding of life.

And eventually, that understanding found its way into a simple motto:

Life is Now.

Not because tomorrow doesn’t matter.

But because tomorrow has never been guaranteed.

Perhaps the next step is simply to talk about a plan you keep postponing.

Be sensible, certainly. Just remember to live a little while you are busy being sensible.

For an early journey that helped shape this outlook, read my first long-distance adventure in Sri Lanka.