Say Yes While You Still Can (Before It's Too Late)

Most travellers look back on their experiences and love to reminisce with a smile. It’s a reminder of a different time - the faces they met, places they saw. It’s easy to get emotional.

The feeling of nostalgia is a drug.

Then some people look back not with nostalgia, but with regret. You know the crowd.

• The “I should’ve gone.”

• The “I almost did.”

• The “I wish I’d said yes.”

If you’re still sitting on the fence, I have good news. It’s not too late.

But it could be soon - if you let it.

Solo Travel at Nineteen

The plane broke through the clouds, and then finally the city came into view.

“Hello London, nice to see you”.

The winding River Thames, endless terrace houses and of course, the low grey drizzle. It looked like the EastEnders opening credits. I half-expected the piano riff to kick in.

The English guy who was on the window seat offered to swap to give me a better look. I couldn’t look away.

I’d been raised on classic British comedy, sport and Britpop. Rik and his anarchist flatmates on The Young Ones. Delboy and Rodney, Gazza’s goal at Wembley and Definitely Maybe by Oasis - it all lived in my head.

Now it was real.

And through the scratched window of that Canadian Airlines flight, I saw one thing: opportunity.

Not anxiety. Not fear. Not a mental checklist of things my Nana said that could go wrong. I only saw the promise of new adventures.

Was I naive? Hell yeah. Did I know what I was letting myself in for? Not a chance.

But sometimes jumping off the cliff without knowing how to land is the only way you learn to fly.

Travel Is an Attitude

My mother cried at the airport.

I wondered what all the fuss was about. So I hugged her tightly, walked off, and didn’t look back.

Maybe she knew something I didn’t. Maybe there WAS something to fear or be cautious about. But the feeling didn’t last.

That’s the thing about being young: when something excites you, you don’t think about it. You don’t query it. You just go. That energy is rare - and it’s gold.

So when (and why) does it fade?

Somewhere between our twenties and thirties, we start talking ourselves out of the very things we used to chase. We get clever about it too - dressing up fear as ‘being sensible’.

• What if I get robbed?

• What if the job doesn’t work out?

• What if the flight’s delayed, I miss the last train AND then I get kidnapped by a seedy Uber driver?

Let me tell you: 99% of the “what ifs” never happen. But regret?

That one sticks around (and it’s a bitch).

We make excuses and call them reasons. We stay in safe, familiar lanes - the ones that don’t actually go anywhere. And slowly, without even knowing it, we become people we don’t recognise anymore.

How do I know this? Because I eventually joined that lane.

The Longer You Say No, the Harder It Gets to Say Yes

Some people stop dreaming entirely. You probably know a few.

They used to be up for anything. Then life happened - slowly, then all at once. It might have happened to you.

But let’s talk about the ones who have stopped.

They didn’t become boring overnight. They just said ‘No’ one too many times.

And the lane I joined in? That was the ‘No’ lane. The scenery is boring and the bars close at 7pm. The ‘No’ lane needs roadworks. It’s a bumpy one. It left me with scars.

Some are still healing.

It took a long time - and some hard lessons to climb out of that rut. Man, it sucked.

But I did.

And what I see now was always there: the world is still full of opportunity if your eyes are open.

And if you need a reason to say yes to something new, here it is:

“Every experience you say yes to is a chance to have a life-changing one”

Travel didn’t just give me stories - it taught me how to be a man. It taught me that the world is full of lessons you can’t learn at home. It humbled me and gave me a lifetime full of experiences that I’m proud of.

Most of those stories started with a mix of naivety and dumb luck. I didn’t complicate anything.

I, like Jim Carrey, just said ‘Yes’.

Being Anonymous Was a Superpower

London is the easiest place in the world to disappear - maybe that’s what Mum was frightened about.

I’d walk into pubs alone, grab a stool, and talk to whoever was around. As a Kiwi, my accent was a giveaway. Most conversations started like this:

“Where you from, mate?”
“Australia?”
“Close enough.”

I laughed with strangers. Played pool badly. Tried to chat girls up. Screamed at football on the telly. Even got offered dodgy jobs. I loved every second.

Every single interaction added a sentence to my story. A memory. Apart from after the sixth pint, but that’s another story.

The point is I felt anonymous - but more ME than I’d ever been.

Not for a second did I think the barman would rip me off. That the tattooed guys with Chelsea Football shirts on would do me over.

Were they bad people? Maybe. Should I have been more cautious? Perhaps. But another way of looking at it is that perhaps my genuineness and naivety were the reason people left me alone.

It’s amazing what a smile and a little banter can do.

Would I Do It Again? You Bet

I ask myself now and then: Would I still do it - say yes, pack a bag and book the flight?

Yes. Every time.

Because the only real difference between me now and the kid with the pimpled face who got ID’d everywhere is experience.

And twenty-five years later, experience tells me the same thing my gut did back then:

People are mostly kind. The world is worth exploring. The biggest risk is doing nothing.

Even now, I’m still that guy - visiting random old towns, sitting alone in a pub or a coffee shop, getting lost on purpose.

When I went camping with my family for several months in 2019 in Europe, I got to do it every day. From wandering small towns in Bavaria to the hills in Tuscany, I had the same experiences as decades earlier.

It might have just been a nod and a smile to a random stranger. Maybe a small conversation. This is the part of travel you don’t get in ‘Top 10’ lists.

Maybe that makes me unusual for my age. I don’t care.

Because I know the best stories don’t come from a guidebook or visiting the same hotel year after year.

Write Your Own Story

The nineteen-year-old version of me and the forty-something me would get along just fine.

We’d probably sit in a pub, talk crap and laugh loudly. We’d down pints to stories that haven’t even happened yet. And exaggerate the ones that already have.

But if I could tell nineteen-year-old me, it’d be this:

Keep saying yes. The world doesn’t owe you stories - you’ve got to go out and make them.

If more of us stopped thinking and started doing, our lives would be a hell of a lot richer.

Now it won’t always work out like you imagined. But at least you had the guts to try.

So stop overthinking.

Stop waiting for permission from people who don’t really care in the first place or the perfect moment.

Write your own adventure story - one that doesn’t end because ‘life’ got in the way.

Make it messy. Make it full. But most of all:

Make it YOURS.