IT’S GETTING LATE.

Do it now.

As I was waiting to get off the plane coming home from Africa, the flight attendant picked up the phone and cheerfully requested sixteen wheelchairs.

Sixteen. Wheelchairs.

Sixteen people on that plane who had traveled halfway around the world, who couldn’t quite do it on their own anymore, who had looked at the distance and the discomfort and the twenty-four hours of airports and said yes anyway.

I thought about that as I limped past the brigade that had lined up. I had an ugly, swollen, purple ankle from an evening before I left where wet grass and a barreling dog collided. I refused a medical opinion because I didn’t want a boot or anyone to tell me I couldn’t go.

Combine that with new knees, a macular hole, a couple of corrective optical surgeries, an assortment of other things that snap and swell and blur and sag and nag that I also choose to ignore might put me in the same position of the frog in the pot. One day, I’ll wake up and I’m cooked.

But I don’t see these as “warning signs” as much as I see it as a kick in the butt and a firm talking to from the same voice I used with Millie when she was in 5th grade and needed to get her homework done. Do it now, I’d tell her. It’s getting late. You’ve got to get it done. You don’t want to save it for tomorrow.

Which is the same voice I used with myself for a big, somewhat impulsive trip that scared me cuz there’s just so much going on in the world, but that voice was persistent.

“Do it now. While you’re still upright and have (most of) your faculties. Do it now…while your eyes are still sharp enough to find the leopard hidden in the acacia and your ears can still catch the panting and puffing of a lioness calling to her cubs out on the plain. While you can smell the wild basil and lift your own body into a car, a plane, a pool. Do it now, while you aren’t in the wheelchair line.”

So I’ll use that same voice to firmly encourage you…to not just to take a trip. But to travel your own life.

Do it now- before you’re ready.

There will never be a perfect moment. The ankle will be swollen. The world will be a mess. You’ll feel vaguely guilty about leaving the city you love. Go anyway.

Here’s what nobody tells you about courage. it doesn’t show up before you go. It shows up on the way. Confidence doesn’t grow from talking about it. It grows from using it. You get lost, miss a turn, find yourself surrounded by men with machetes, and you survive. Suddenly the things that scare you at home start looking considerably smaller. You are more capable than your calendar and your comfort zone have been telling you.

Do it now-to come home to yourself.

It’s interesting how going miles away from your life somehow leads you back into it. Back to the version of yourself that exists outside of meetings and obligations and the speeding blur of days -or the flip side, catatonic couch sitting, endless scrolling, that all feels the same.

You’re not trying to bring home a souvenir or find something you don’t already have. It’s just a change in time and space that allows you to go within and remember what’s already there.

Do it now-on a Tuesday. In Fridley.

Both Big things and little things that are embarrassingly doable right here at home.

Like…

Set your alarm twenty minutes earlier than you need to. Not to be productive. Just to exist before the day needs something from you.

Go outside before your phone does. Just once this week. The sky is performing. Don’t miss it.

Drive somewhere you’ve never been without Google telling you where to go. Pick a direction. See what happens.

Walk through your own city like a tourist one afternoon. Take photos. Read signs. You live somewhere beautiful and routine has made you blind to it.

Say yes to the invitation you’d normally skip. Some of the best nights start with I almost didn’t come.

Go somewhere alone. A coffee shop in a neighborhood you don’t know. A trail you’ve never taken. Alone time isn’t lonely. It’s how you remember what you actually think.

The point isn’t to escape your life. It’s to travel all of it.

So. Do it now.

It’s getting late…but it’s not too late.