Mind Time Travel

Too many years ago I decided the the misfortunes of life would affect me less if I keep a certain detachment....a distance if you will, between everyone else and me. When people who occupied the next bunk over, or in the next hut were there in the morning and not in the evening, the void left, especially if quasi-friends was a bit much to bear.

Consequences resulting from that decision have had far reaching effects, touching wife, children, friends, both near and far, work and job satisfaction.

Probably the worst effect has been an inability to plan for the long term, focusing rather on the immediate over the anticipated. This has lead to a life lived on the edge.....never fully tasting of the sweetness of a fully involved life. If you wonder how such a one could accumulate nearly 42 years of marriage to the same person and wonderful children and grandchildren who love me.......so do I. Blessings of Angels I suppose.

One of the results has been a focus more on the work, whatever it was, or at other times totally blowing it off, so that the tangible rewards enjoyed by many haven't been fully experienced. Travel, for instance, has always been something I wanted to do. Did we do much of it. Not if it took more that 6 or 8 hours. Mine has been done in my minds eye.

Wish to travel to Europe, watch the travel channel or mostly read books. Africa...watch Humphrey Bogart in 'The African Queen", or 'Casablanca'.

The last weeks travels have been to Mexico, sparked by 50 and 20 Peso pieces... Holland for information on Trade Ducat, Great Britain to look at Half Sovereigns.

Today I traveled back to 1911 Germany, to the reign of Wilhelm II for a Gold 20 Mark coin.

The history on young Wilhelm was quite interesting. The Kaiser who helped incite the Austria-Hungary federation to provoke war with Serbia was the grandson of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and actually held a position in the English armed forces by birthright. Little good it did him when England, Russia and the U.S. came to the fight against them in WWI. Little wonder that pictures of him taken in Holland where he fled into exile and lived until death in 1941 showed a sad, perhaps bitter, man. I wonder how many shoulda, woulda, coulda thoughts ran through his head over the last 30 + years of his life.

I guess like most of us he had plenty of them.

Traveling in Mind Time is no substitute for actually going there, but it may be as close as I get.