Mind the gap

Although I have no idea about the meaning of life, I do believe the journey is more important than the destination, I don't believe I have ever had an end goal in sight. I know I have never had a view of where life was taking me, I didn't have a checklist of husband, family, house, retirement. I have had fleeting glimpses of things I would like to do on the journey, but never felt they were a means to an end, maybe everyone is the same, I don't know. One thing I do know, is that the path I have taken has meant a series of relationships, each one filling my time for a while, giving me things, teaching me lessons (I hope) giving me insight into people, possibly immaterial in the bigger scheme of things but they have provided me with company on the journey.

There are probably many downsides to this way of life, most of them won't trouble me, but today I remembered one of the downsides which I had previously recognised and forgotten.

In one relationship, holidays were very important to us, we both enjoyed travel, and had travelled plenty before  we met. We realised, somehow we were missing out on something as we couldn't reminisce about our previous travels as they had been with other people. We started to play a game, when we spoke about previous holidays, we imagined...pretended we had both been there, and added us to the story. 'A' would say, do you remember Malta, we had a great time but you didn't like the boat driver, I would agree. A knew that had I been there I would not have liked the boat driver. I might say, you liked Iceland but didn't like the lack of alcohol....we could then play along for a while, talk about the holiday together,  it was an ok game to plug a gap we had found. 

Today I have realised that I have so many memories, of so many places, visited with a variety of people, it may just be one of the things I envy in happily married couples, they can reminisce about their favourite times, and the times belong to them both.