MANAGING HOLIDAY EXPECTATIONS

As we enter the final, furious week of the pre-Christmas countdown, it's an appropriate occasion to ruminate on the notion of holiday expectations, seeing similarities between the holidays we're celebrating and the travel holidays that might be taken during the coming year.  The experience of getting and giving gifts has much in common with the experience of taking trips. Trips, just as gifts, come wrapped in anticipation, anxiety, expectation, joy, disappointment and the creation of memories.

Experienced travelers realize that every journey has three parts.  The actual trip is the result of a planning process that can cover many weeks, months or even years. The anticipation and expectation generated during that planning process, not to mention the anxiety that often accompanies them, fill the time before the trip with an heightened energy that is quite different from the regular, everyday brand.  Then there's the journey itself, the actualization of the planning coming face to face with the realities of taking trips in the world, and the inexhaustible supply of experiences, good and bad, which that confrontation entails. It's been noted that life is what happens while we're busy making plans. Travel is often the events that take place while we're waiting for the plane to leave.  And, of course, the reality of the trip is followed by that internal album of impressions we call memory, the part of the journey that lasts the longest, even longer than the Visa bill to pay for it. The memories we take away from a trip are often quite different from the conscious observations we make during the trip.  Of course, as is often the case with many aspects of real life, trips don't always work the way we planned them. Planes can be late. Anticipated destinations can be disappointing. The view from the real hotel may barely resemble the one pictured so colorfully in the brochure, let alone the one pictured in the traveler's imagination. And there's the weather, Mother Nature's April Fool's joke on travelers, which can be dismal; too much rain, or not enough sunshine to swim or snow to ski. Dismal days have dampened many trips.  Equally often in travel, and in life, disappointment over unfulfilled expectations greatly interfere with the ability to enjoy the reality that actually takes place.  Very often, those unanticipated experiences become the grain of sand around which the pearls of travel memories form. How often is it that the unanticipated occurrences, good and bad, make the best travel stories?  In his book "Bitter Lemons," Lawrence Durrell observed that, "Journeys, like artists, are born, not made. A thousand different circumstances contribute, few of which are determined by will."  As much as we'd like to believe, as much as travel industry would like to assure us, that it is possible to control all the elements of a trip, chance remains a primary ingredient.  Some travelers prefer to plan tight timetables, with every moment of a trip planned months before departure. Other are content to schedule little more than a destination and date of departure and seemingly leave the rest to fate.  Neither recipe is ideal for every occasion.  Where's the sense of spending arduous hours on a discretionary trek to some incredible vista, only to give it a cursory glance through the lens of a camera or videotape recorder? Sticking doggedly to a prearranged itinerary often means rushing through a truly special travel moment or, worse, overlooking it altogether.  Travel's richest nuggets often involve sifting through hours of boredom and inconvenience.  On the other hand, being totally oblivious to the schedule is a good way to get nowhere fast.  Take time to smell the flowers, but don't miss the boat.  The reality is that successful travel often means balancing reasonable expectations with a willingness to forget them if things don't work out as planned.  As when opening a present on Christmas morning, never let disappointment from failed expectations detract from enjoying the pleasures of what actually takes place.  Even bitter lemons can make sweet lemonade.


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