6 minute read
Bottom Line Up Front: I spent 21 days in Egypt with my family touring the entire country, and these are some of the personal lessons I learned, and would like to share with you:
- To enjoy life you must be present for it.
- Exploring our history is vital for self-understanding and not repeating mistakes.
- Rest and recovery is critical to balancing our unending expectations.
- Life is not a solo sport, sometimes you need help.
- Hospitality is love in action.
- Embrace a little chaos.
- Knowing we will all die one day, puts everything in clear perspective.
- Love is the meaning of life
My family and I just returned from a 21 day trip to Egypt, and it was absolutely astounding. I don’t believe that my life will be the same after this experience. It was more than a touristy vacation, I experienced history, culture, family, and self-reflections in such a profound way, that I couldn’t help but be changed as a result. What follows are some of the life lessons I learned, and my hope is that in sharing them with you, we both will become better.
To enjoy life you must be present for it. Life is what happens between events, which means that if we are only living for the tasks and events in our lives, we are missing a whole lot of life. One of the most challenging things for me is to be in the present moment on a consistent basis. Often I focus on the mistakes of the past or terrorize myself over every future scenario. I blow through my to-do list at the expense of the things that matter most – time and intentional engagement with my family, connecting with colleagues and teammates, and my own personal re-creation. This trip forced me to be present, and you know what happened? I enjoyed life, my family, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, legends, and adventures of that beautiful country. I really lived, and I have 3000 pictures to prove it.
Exploring our history is vital for self-understanding and not repeating mistakes. History is not just something we study in school, it is vital to understanding ourselves. History helps us to understand our tendencies, character, strengths, weaknesses, the lessons we’ve learned, and how far we have come. If we don’t explore our own history we could end up repeating the same mistakes and seeing the same problems over and over again. In Egypt, I was able to experience history on two levels – at the national level, and at the personal level. On a national level, I experienced history through our guides at the various temples and tombs. On a personal level, I experienced my own history through the retelling of old legends and stories. My family told the story of the last time I was in Egypt. I was 8 years old, and I put ketchup on everything, otherwise I wouldn’t eat. Ketchup was not available in Egypt at that time, and we forgot our bottle of Heinz in Asyut. So my parents had to send someone by train (4 hours away) to retrieve it. It was a humorous legend, but by exploring my personal history, I learned how far I’ve come. Since then, I’ve outgrown my childish addiction for ketchup, developed maturity and the decision-making skills to make good dietary choices.
Rest and recovery is critical to balancing our unending expectations. I’m a recovering workaholic. I’ve had to learn over decades how to balance work and integrate rest and recovery cycles into my routine. 21 days in Egypt gave me no choice but to unplug and just simply go along for the ride – literally. EVERY TIME I take a vacation, and really enjoy it, I realize how important getting away from work is. There is a time to work, and there is a time to rest, and I need both in healthy amounts. If we have family, friends, or a job there will always be expectations of us. What is critical is to balance those expectations with rest, recovery, and removal of anything unhealthy in our existence. Fun Statistic: A study done by the US Travel Association showed that “People who took fewer than 10 of their vacation days per year had a 34.6% likelihood of receiving a raise or bonus in a three-year period of time. People who took more than 10 of their vacation days had a 65.4% chance of receiving a raise or bonus.” I’m already planning our next vacation.
Life is not a solo sport, sometimes you really do need help. I pride myself on being a generalist – a jack of all trades, and actually master of some, but sometimes I am out of my depth. Planning a 21 day trip to Egypt, where I don’t have mastery of the language, or experience with the business culture required me to get help. Our trip was logistically complex – We traversed the entire North to South geography of Egypt and came within 60 kilometers or 37 miles of Sudan. Our travel included 16 bags (of luggage), 8 airplanes, 8 cities, a Nile Cruise, 2 camels, 2 horses, 6 boats (sail and motorized), 3 hotels (including one on an island in the middle of the Nile), 2 family hosts, 2 Ubers, 9 different private drivers, 4 Egyptologists (Guides), 3-4 key advisors who help craft the itinerary. Not to mention the fact that each night when were in Cairo we had dinners with a different family every day, and also we needed to provide gifts for over 70 people in our family. I had to rely on the help of others, something I struggle with immensely, but I learned that “others too have brains”, and sometimes they will surprise you with how good they really are.
Hospitality is love in action. Egyptians are extraordinary in terms of hospitality. On multiple occasions, we would be shopping in a store, and the proprietor would come up to us an offer us some tea, with the hope and expectation that we would actually sit down with them and enjoy 30 minutes together. Actually it was really good for business, because we got to know them and ended up buying more stuff. Our family hosts in Egypt were tremendous in terms of hospitality, we were hosted in multiple family homes and each of them prepared epic meals everyday, several times a day. Our family hosts gave us their master bedrooms so we would have our own place to stay. They gave us toothbrushes, toothpaste, and shaving cream. They went out and bought new towels. They served us their most expensive delicacies – which in their case is pigeon. They gave us their best of everything, and in their culture it is their way of showing love. The more food, service, and generosity – the more love they are showing you. And we felt deeply loved. Hospitality is love in the Egyptian culture.
Embrace a little chaos. In Egypt, anything and everything is possible. You can see it in the way they drive. There are lanes, rules, and red lights, but those are really more suggestions and guidelines. To be happy in Egypt, you need to embrace a little chaos, and let go of order or structure. Flexibility, improvisation, and thinking on your feet is key. I had an organized plan for our trip, and some of those plans were thwarted over and over again, and I struggled with that, but it was a good lesson for me that sometimes things happen for the best, we don’t always get our way, and things that take the place of our plans are sometimes better or more meaningful than what we originally had in mind. Ultimately, the trip exceeded everyone’s expectations, and I learned an incredible character lesson as a result – be flexible, let go of the plan, live in the moment, go with the flow, don’t mind the mess, and embrace a little chaos.
Knowing we will all die one day, puts everything in clear perspective. The tallest buildings in a society shows what it values. Their tallest buildings were pyramids – giant gateways to the afterlife. You didn’t find a lot of intact ancient Egyptian homes, because they were made of mud-brick. Their pyramids and temples were made of limestone, sandstone, and granite – earthly elements that would last forever. In ancient Egypt, they valued life, but they saw this as only one part of the journey. Death was a doorway to another life, and a great deal of life was spent preparing for the next one. Death was accepted as a foregone conclusion, it was embraced and prepared for, it was even celebrated – not something to be delayed and avoided with medication, and wrinkle cremes as we do today. If we embrace that Death is an absolute we will focus on what is truly meaningful in life – faith, family, friendship, food, joy, peace, variety, contribution, laughter, balance/integration, and the courage to live OUR life and not the one others expect of us.
Love is the meaning of life. I have my own family, and meeting the needs of that family consumes every waking moment when I’m not working, but when I went to Egypt I realized I had this whole other family on the other side of the world that I had frankly neglected for most of my life – until I went to see them. I found that my family in Egypt was where I came from, they were every bit as much my family as the one I lead here in the US. They loved me, my wife, and my children, without condition or reward – they just simply loved us because we were family. I learned that over the years, they thought of us, they prayed for us, they consider us in family decisions, and they loved us from afar. We are not a world apart as I thought, but rather intimately connected. The overwhelming love that we experienced showed me that it is family, friendship, and relationship that drives all of life, and if we get really honest, love is what makes it all meaningful.
As I reflect on our voyage to Egypt, it was a life-altering experience. I learned the importance of being present, exploring deeper aspects my personal history and culture, the importance of rest and recovery, getting help, what true hospitality looks like, embracing life with all its messes and chaos, the perspective of death, and finally – the meaning of life.
Question: What one life lesson would you share?