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Welcome to my weekly newsletter – Where I use real stories from my life to unpack lessons and insights I have learnt. I hope you enjoy the material and gain something impactful to apply to your life.
What’s in store:
- six important lessons for you to take note of
- two out of three men struggle with PORN – ALARMING!
- Rome wasn’t built in a day – this gives you breathing room
- It is a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and we were squandering it because of our own baggage
- Quote: The world is a book, and those who do not travel…
Did you take sixty seconds last week to reflect, to think back to the “good old days” with your significant other, and to remember why you chose them? Why were they “the lucky one” whom you decided to do life with?
If you didn’t do it last week, stop and do it quickly. It’s really not much effort.
Lesson #1 – Know your story. By acknowledging your story – together, you are validating your relationship and making it tangible. You are keeping your commitment to each other front of mind. This is beneficial to minimise the distraction lurking around every corner, waiting to steal your joy. Distraction is everywhere nowadays, at our fingertips, and as we know, social media is the biggest culprit (ironically, very antisocial with our heads stuck in our phones.) Here’s a question: A girl in her bikini shows us how to do a hip thrust exercise from a front-angle shot with her legs spread. Is that necessary or unnecessary to learn the movement correctly? Statistics show that two out of three men already battle with porn.- Put your brother, husband, and dad in one room. Two of them fantasize over their “distraction” – And I am sorry to say that you are not it! Why make life so much harder for yourself and especially your relationship? It’s already NEAR IMPOSSIBLE! Limit distraction, and know your story.
I said last week that the trip seemed okay for the first seven days. The truth is I forgot to mention that on arriving in Florence, Daniella’s bag didn’t come and so didn’t that dreaded second pram – this, as you can imagine, created a whole other level of stress, as I had to explain to the baggage personal in English (which she barely understood) that a bag was missing but more importantly our “running pram”! How do you explain to an old Italian lady that you are missing your red running pram? Maybe it’s my lack of creative explanation, but PRAM and RUNNING do not go together. I tried stroller; I tried trolly; I tried vroom-vroom, you name it, I tried it. Have you ever played Pictionary with an old Italian lady from airport security? Try it…I pushed kai along the airport floor and made sounds to try and demonstrate what a pram was/did. Hell of a thing to witness!
Dan’s bag arrived on day four, and so did the running pram – Clearly, my provocative demonstration paid dividends. Finally, we could breathe, relax, and Daniella could change her smelly-ass four-day-old outfit. She did use my toothbrush and roll-on, which helped ever so slightly.
From Florence, we rented a car and headed into the Tuscan hills. Car hire was so damn expensive, being the height of summer, so we could only afford this little red noddy car(which was perfect for the Italian roads).
Lesson #2 – If your relationship is experiencing turmoil, DO NOT, I repeat, do not rent a car in a foreign country that is left-hand drive, which also drives on the opposite side of the road to what you know. This is the same as throwing a sheep into a cage with hungry lions. There is only one outcome – horror. Italian drivers are crazy – my German friends agree. We think Capetonians are flawed and do not use indicators. Italians, it’s a different ball game altogether. Discovery drive – not a chance that will ever work over there.
At what point do you realize that you have made a wrong decision and either A. Trade the car back in or B. Trade your wife back in? We concluded that I drive, and I navigate. It was just better for our marriage. She was better at researching places to go next. We both had our rolls, which seemed to work better than shouting at each other. Plus, the Italians were doing enough shouting at us.
Lesson #3 – As a couple, decide on your strength and weaknesses upfront. Your partner will complement your weaknesses with their strengths and vice versa. Then, stick to those when you are confronted with difficult situations. If you are good at the direction, then you focus on that. If your partner is good at research or drinking wine, then you focus on that. DON’T cross-contaminate. Stay in your lane, and everyone will be better because of it.
Tuscany was incredible, the historic medieval cities built on hills and the rolling thousand-year-old vineyards. It was a great place. Until Daniella went for a run and trespassed on some guy’s farm; before she knew it, she was unintentionally harvesting juvenile wheat as she tried to navigate her way out of the field. Picture this frantic girl in the middle of a wheat field, blazing a trail through the wheat, destroying a poor farmer’s only profitable crop. She eventually made it out – covered. We made bread for the next two weeks!
Lesson #4 – If your partner is dead set on a bad idea. Let them do it. You can warn them the first time, but after that, don’t waste your energy; it’s not worth the argument; they will do it anyway. Let them learn the hard way. They will come back and apologise – give them a hug and so nothing.
We returned the car, jumped on a train, and headed towards Rome. Now the trains… this was a problem for us. In South Africa, if the trains are working, you pay for first class and get kak class – reality. There is no real class. I paid for the standard ticket class, and because we were late, we just jumped on the train’s first carriage. Little did we know that this was first class and, to make matters worse, a quiet zone. This was a stressful situation, and we were trying to blend in. The train begins, and I see the ticket lady step into our cart; I look at Daniella; Daniella looks at Kaiah; Kaiah’s head buts the seat of the person in front of us…we were busted. Daniella and I frantically try to create the best story about why we are in the quiet zone of first class with a baby. We only had one budget ticket – I realized then that I had only bought one for myself (there was also a note in the station stating you could not buy a ticket on board this particular train).
Lesson #5 – If you are about to lie, make sure your partner is happy to lie because if she is not, and your stories are not coherent – you have a problem. Let me tell you; there will be a failure of character moment, and belittling words will be exchanged because now your ego is bruised. Especially after the ticket officer has called you out in front of everyone… BIG MISTAKE! I learnt that day how honest my wife was and how I needed to check myself and not play the blame game, especially out of pride. Oh, and be more truthful, of course!
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Rome was a disaster – forty degrees celsius with a two-kilometer walk to our apartment. Kai was overheating, Daniella was hangry, and I was parched – where were those two-thousand five-hundred nasoni’s (freshwater fountains) I was told were dotted around Rome?
Daniella and I were losing our personalities and love for each other quickly. The heat was particularly unbearable this day. There are so many incredible places to visit in Rome; Colosseum, Pantheon, Palatine hill, Vatican, Trevi… the list goes on. The question is; How do you navigate all these places in this heat with a baby and a wife who is pregnant with emotion? The short answer is…you don’t. You choose your absolute two most favourite places and you leave the rest, as sad as it is. This is for the best of your marriage and your survival. We saw some incredible places, right off my bucket list as a boy. So although they were short visits, they were nonetheless breathtaking.
Lesson #6 – Run your city at sunrise. We quickly realized that the best way to see many of the sites and sounds, out of the day’s heat and the crowds, was to lace up our shoes, strap Kai in, and hit the streets running at sunrise. This was the best thing we could have done. It was tough to get up early as you naturally go to bed so late (the sun sets late); however, it was so worth it. You experience the city in a whole new way. You can finally get close to the incredible artifacts with only a few people around. However, I say that – the commitment at the Trevi fountain at sunrise by “influencers” was something to behold. We grabbed a café(coffee) and enjoyed the show. The dresses, make-up, tripods, and annoyed boyfriends and even more annoyed girlfriends because of three hundred shots of the same position the boyfriend couldn’t quite get…It was something to see. It was sad.
Daniella and I had the biggest blow-up towards the end of the Rome trip. So many factors culminated in that one thing that finally broke the camel’s back. We really had to take a step back, re-look at ourselves, and then look at how we could be better for each other and Kai. We needed to remind ourselves that she didn’t choose any of this. She is an innocent onlooker, so we are responsible for nurturing, caring, and putting her first. Science tells us that kids are the most impressionable from 0-4 years old. Everything that creates their future personality and internal reality is learned and observed in those first fundamental years. This gives us even greater responsibility as parents.
The next phase of the trip was the Amalfi coast, which we had heard so much about and could not wait for the beach. So we decided it was a good time to put the past behind us and move forward with new eyes and a new understanding that this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip. We didn’t want to look back and have big regrets because we were too selfish, stubborn, prideful, or even too hectic about everything. I realized especially that not everything needed to be planned 100%, and letting go a little made me a more tolerable person for Dan to be around, and it helped me relax and see the bigger picture. This took me a month to realize. Things seemed to go so much better once I realized that.
I believe travelling is one of the best courses you can ever invest in. The lessons you will learn along the journey are invaluable. It opens you up to new ways of thinking, to new cultures, you gain insights, you learn to be present and embrace the journey for what it is. And it doesn’t stop there. You grow exponentially as an individual, as you lean into your curiosity and explore the great wide world. Start with one country, close by.
Plan, save, explore.
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page – Saint Augustine
In your day, be courageous, confident, and curious.
Your Friend
Trev.
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