I was nearby the immigration counter at an airport and in front of me was an elderly couple with their son. The son as telling his dad on how should he approach the immigration officer with the relevant information. His father looked kind of lost yet did not utter a single word. When it was his turn to show the documents to the officer, it was found that a lot of information was not furnished.
He was told to fill it up. His son was asked to assist him, In the process, his dad left his bag at the immigration counter. 
At the same time, it was his mum ‘s turn at another immigration counter. Same thing happened and his son was called up. An immigration officer spoke in a loud voice and told his son that they are holding up everything and told him to sort out the details nearby.
I wondered why the son was never the first one in the queue.
I tried to understand why the information was not filled up.
I couldn’t comprehend why the immigration officer needed to speak in a loud voice to them especially when it has to do with the elderly couple.
I was having tea with an old friend of mine and she shared with me her philosophy of life.
She has been travelling quite extensively for holidays. Especially now that she has retired from work. She just came back from Australia and already she had plans to go to Europe for about three weeks. Her philosophy hinged on the principle that travelling opened up her mind full of possibilities and allowed her to appreciate the different cultures of the various countries that she went to. The experience is more valuable to her than other materialistic thing in life. She knew that once the age sets in, travelling will be harder and mobility and stamina will be lesser by the day. Therefore she wanted to spend time travelling while she would still be in a condition to do so. She has a collection of expensive watches yet she found that she hardly used them and after a while the cost of maintaining the watches could be pretty expensive. As people aged, reasoned her, the expenses spent is primarily for health and food as travelling would be so much minimal by then. Even if an aged person would have all the money in the world, travelling abroad can be quite a challenge.
So why not travel now when she has the capacity to do so?
Appreciate the beauty of the world as time is never patient with anyone.
Live life to the fullest and embrace everything beautiful about the world that lies within our eyes.
She has seen many beautiful things in the world yet its never enough.
And while time ultimately moves ahead, she found herself travelling even a lot more.
Materialistic stuff might carry lesser value as we progressed with time.
We yearned for self enriching experience.
The ones that would continuously shape our thoughts in a better way as time surged ahead.
While waiting to catch a train when I was overseas recently, I bumped into a young lady from Europe who worked in an elderly nursing site back in her home country. She told about the places she had visited. Each time she travelled it would be more than a month or so. However she felt that this would be her last leg of tour in South East Asia. She would be reaching twenty seven soon and she planned to focus on South America next. She gave me the impression that she would not be doing this all her life as other priorities come into play.
I guessed that she knew exactly what she would be embarking on.
While she had the energy and the luxury of time, why not make full use of what would be available.
She might not be making tons of money however she might be richer in terms of experience due to her constancy in travelling.
How much money can we make and how much money will be enough?
Can we substitute experience with money?
And even if we made a lot of money, can we find time to spend some of it?
Or will we be so busy making money until we forgot to embark on a journey of self discovery by travelling?
Will money ever substitute the experience that might be derived from our travelling?
Perhaps by the time we call it quits, we might not have the agility and stamina to venture on a self searching journey of discovery.
What then do we look for?
In the oyster of our dreams.