By Delia Grizzard
I have a friend who always says there is “no such thing as a bad experience,” and I never knew how to feel about that philosophy. While I don’t think that friend has ever had his stuff stolen from him in a foreign country before, I still think he might have a point.
I recently traveled across the pond to Ireland and the United Kingdom (U.K.) for two weeks with a close friend. In an effort to avoid fees for checking baggage, we decided to bring just one backpack each. Halfway through the trip, the burden of luggage was generously lifted off our literal shoulders, when our tour bus was broken into in County Meath, Ireland.
The trip was on my own dime, so I experienced, for the first time, that special kind of pissed off feeling that parents get when you bring the car home after someone messes up the bumper. It’s tricky knowing that you didn’t really do anything wrong, but are still very angry and upset. It’s hard to settle that feeling in your stomach, a combination of acute awareness and temporary disappointment in your fellow humans.
I don’t intend this to be interpreted as a travel warning — the trip was in no way defined by this one experience.
At most, there was a worried 24-hour period of calling embassies and airlines that dampened our last day in Dublin.
But that day in County Meath, Ireland was far more memorable for its stunning scenery than the robbery, and the Irish families with whom I was lucky enough to stay, could not have been more friendly, funny or generous.
I won’t remember the entire trip as some wild vacation, nor will my memories be defined by losing my luggage — the whole experience was far more complex and vivid than that.
I had convinced myself that I deserved this trip to relax and get away. I worked hard in advance so I could enjoy every single minute that I was abroad. I may have had an idea of what I thought I deserved, but what I ended up receiving was entirely different — in a way that, I think, is much more valuable than what I originally hoped for.
It’s an obvious truth, but easy to forget when you’re gallivanting around with friends: real life keeps going even when you pay a lot of your own money to be a tourist.
Just like I might have a rough experience in New York, I can have a rough experience in any foreign country, no matter how many precautions I take.
I think it is impossible to decide for all human experiences if any can be defined as absolutely bad. But, feeling vulnerable or helpless undeniably tests our strength, and though it may be difficult to celebrate that in the moment — or even for a while afterward — it is absolutely worthy of praise.
