I lived with someone for 16 years before I broke it off. Much of that time I was unhappy, but for the most part I don’t think of it as a total loss. Life was lived. Trips were taken. We laughed, we cried. Time passed.
Among other things, he’s a DJ, and the other night I was listening to his radio show and he mentioned he had recently been on a cruise. Part of me was jealous as hell, because I’m in a financial position right now where a cruise is so out of reach it may as well be a trip to mars. And it was kind of disconcerting, knowing he was on some wonderful adventure while I was at the bottom of a deep dark well of depression and mourning.
But at the same time, it made me break out in a huge smile, because whether he realizes it or acknowledges it or not, his being on that cruise has me written all over it. Before he met me, he’d rarely ventured out of Jacksonville. He’d been to Miami once. And just over the border into Georgia for a wedding, and once on a road trip to New Orleans, but that was it.
You can’t be in a relationship with me and not travel. It’s my reason for being. So with me, he traveled. We went to Puerto Rico, causing his mother to panic that he’d wind up in some Puerto Rican Gulag or something, but surprise! I brought him home safe and with an expanded outlook on the world. We went to Canada. We drove across the country on Route 66. We went to Croatia, Slovenia, Venice, and Hungary. We went to Turkey and Greece and Holland. We, too, went on a cruise, to the Bahamas.
So, you see, I gave him the world. And it changed him for the better. Travel does that. It makes you realize that your way isn’t the only way, or even, necessarily, the best way.
When I broke up with him, I despaired that he’d ever travel again, because even while with me, when he traveled without me, he didn’t really travel. He’d fly up to New Jersey to visit his sister for a week and spend the entire time doing nothing but sitting in her living room, even though New York City was just beyond the horizon. I never understood that. It would drive me insane.
So I really assumed that he would sink right back into the dark ages without my influence. Because of that, hearing him say on the radio that he’d recently been on a cruise was sort of like winning the lottery. I had a positive impact on someone, and when all is said and done in life, that is the best legacy you can possibly leave behind.
Best wishes, John, and happy travels.
The View from a Drawbridge 
I love that quote, but a surprising number of people can still keep their narrow-mindedness and bigotry even when they travel all over the world.
That’s true, but it gets harder.
Not for some people.