It’s all relative.
During the 18 years we lived in Minnesota, we drove to the Chicago area—where most of our relatives still lived—at least two or three times a year. It was a seven- or eight-hour drive, and made for a long day, especially when the kids were young and when winter weather was especially wintery.
When we moved to Georgia seven years ago, our daughter was living in Florida. It was roughly an eight-hour drive to see her, and we never had to worry about snowy weather slowing us down. I remember that when we were first house-hunting, I mentioned to our realtor that our daughter lived in Orlando.
“Getting to Orlando from here is easy,” she said. “You go to Macon and turn left, or to Savannah and turn right.” It really was pretty much that straight of a shot.
During the past few years, while our daughter was living in California, we visited her a few times. Most of the time we flew, but we made the trip once as a cross-country drive. On that trip, we also spent a day in Roswell, New Mexico, to visit the area believed to be the site of a UFO crash in 1947. And we drove past the statue known as the World’s Largest Pistachio, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, although that wasn’t a planned stop on our itinerary.
Our daughter is moving back to Florida, and when I’ve mentioned that to friends, their first comment, without exception, has been, “You must be so happy to have her so close.”
They’re absolutely right—we are! But I have to laugh at how well this demonstrates one of Einstein’s theories of relativity. It’s definitely true that everything is relative. That eight-hour drive from Minneapolis to Chicago was a long drive, but the eight-hour drive from our house to our daughter’s in Orlando—not so bad. And compared to the distance from here to the apartment she had in California, the drive to see her in Florida now is merely a hop, skip, and a jump.
Pretty much everything in life can be seen in relative terms—near or far, hot or cold, good or bad, easy or difficult, and whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. It all depends on what we’re comparing it to, or what we’ve gotten used to. And that means that how we look at things matters more than the actual details, like distance, time, and temperature.
That’s something to think about, isn’t it? I’m going to ponder it on our next trip to visit our daughter.
September 16, 2024
©Betty Liedtke, 2024
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