Growing up in the South during the great depression of the 1930’s in a family with eight children, I could not have imagined the life I’d grow up to live. It has been filled with love, adventure and world travel. As a small child I always wanted to see around the corner and took my first independent adventure at the age of 4.
I was born with an insatiable curiosity about the world and the people who live in it. Fortunately I found ways to travel to a great many far-away places during my life. Most often people were much poorer than middle-class people in my own country. Almost always they treated me with dignity and respect and appreciation that I had come a long way to visit their homeland. When I returned home it was with a renewed conviction that I’m living in the best country in the world.
In India in 1973 I asked our driver for the day to please stop the car on the side of the rough, two-lane road so my son and I could watch a wedding taking place in the open yard of a modest dwelling. The costumes were colorful and the music, played by four or five unusual instruments, was loud. People were smiling and laughing as they danced all around on bare dirt . We had just come from Agra where we’d gone to see the Taj Mahal, one of the most beautiful memorials in the world. As we continued our drive to New Delhi I pondered what I’d just witnessed: a wedding taking place in a venue that couldn’t have been more modest. Even so, the love and joy and reverence for promises being made were identical to a wedding at home. Once again I confirmed what I had already learned in other places. The people who inhabit this planet called Earth, are all amazingly similar. We all share strong emotional feelings and most of us construct our lives in similar patterns.
My travels taught me to be less judgmental and less demanding in what I believe I need in my own life. I have become more relaxed and able to live more in the moment. When traveling I’m totally able to leave any troubles in my life at home. I’ll take care of them when I return. Traveling gives me a feeling of total freedom to live my own life. I am in charge of my destiny.
I began a new journey at the age of 74. My journey was mostly delightful but, at times, also made me sad. I lived my life all over again, this time putting it all down on paper as my children had for years begged me to do. After my retirement I had spent a lot of time traveling and playing tennis and golf so kept postponing the writing project. The death of my second husband in 2005 triggered a change in priorities. I made a decision to give up tennis and golf and write the book I’d promised. In the spring of 2013, I published my life story intermingled with my world travels. “
To Travel Is To Live tells it all. As Anis Nin wrote, We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
To Travel Is To Live can be ordered by most book stores or viewed and ordered from:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1481265113
Betty Moorhead lives in Northwest Washington
