"I wish I had..."

As big as London is, its funny how small a world can be.

I randomly ran into an old colleague from Chicago over the weekend while traveling on the tube. Now its one thing to "randomly" run into someone you know once, but twice?

I ran into this same colleague walking in South Bank over the summer, but I was running late for a movie and I never had the chance to talk and have that short 2-3 minute exchange of "hey what's up, what have you been up to" routine...

As fate would have it, I run into her AGAIN this weekend!

Sure enough, we exchange numbers and finally meet up this evening.

She's one of those free spirits that doesn't get caught up on normalcy.

Her recent affair was working for the UN in Liberia and is just rolling off after 2.5 years. Before that, she took a year off and traveled. Now here she is again, taking a few months off traveling again to decompress. What a life. =)

We discussed her experiences in the past few years: taking a year off, working for the UN, her plans in the next couple of months.. and one thing she said stuck in my mind:

"I don't want to look back one day and think to myself: I wish I had..."

I find it intriguing to talk to people that have experiences in 3rd world countries and work for companies that are involved in humanitarianism.

I sometimes think about how lucky I am having the opportunity I have living and working here and the experiences I go through, but man, anyone working in less fortunate countries abroad and working for the common good, now that's amazing.

I find it admirable when people just decide to: "Take a year off to travel."

She was telling me how psychologically difficult it is to remove yourself from the thought of "not having a paycheck" and "not worrying about your bills." But eventually she said, you get over it.. after the first couple of months off. =)