Twenty years ago this week, my husband and I took our three young sons—ages five, nine, and eleven—to China for spring break. We had enjoyed family vacations all around the country, and our kids were good travelers. But a one-week trip to China was an audacious choice.
It began with a third-grade project in the fall of 1999, when our middle son mailed Flat Stanley to friends who were living with their four children in Beijing. For those unfamiliar, Flat Stanley is the main character of a children’s book written in 1964 by Jeff Brown. Decades later, the book and character inspired Canadian educator Dale Hubert to create the Flat Stanley Project, which our local school district uses as part of the curriculum. The students each create and then mail a paper doll (“Flat” Stanley) to a friend or relative in another city or state. The recipient hosts Flat Stanley as a guest for a few days, and then mails him back, usually with accompanying photos and souvenirs from his visit. In this way, students learn about other parts of the country or world.
Our son’s Flat Stanley had a terrific vacation. He returned folded into a FedEx envelope accompanied by a photo album filled with pictures of him at the Great Wall, at the kids’ international school, in a rickshaw, and at Tiananmen Square. The descriptions of his adventures were priceless. We were intrigued, and we were jealous of Flat Stanley’s adventure. With a leap of logic that surprises me to this day, we reasoned that if one paper doll could make the trip, surely five flesh-and-blood people could do it. We contacted our friends.
Shortly after the New Year we purchased five airline tickets for a triangle trip–Chicago to Hong Kong to Beijing to Chicago—for the boys’ spring break during the last week in March. I had no sooner paid for the tickets than I began to be anxious, very anxious. In 2000, China was still a pretty remote vacation destination for a family from Illinois.
For the next two months I worried. How would the children cope on the 18-hour non-stop flight? Could I trust the doctors in Beijing if someone needed emergency medical care? Would the boys eat unfamiliar foods? Would I remember that the traffic drove on the “wrong” side of the road and be able grab the youngest one fast enough if he stepped off the curb into the path of a bus? I fretted about language barriers, directions, customs, and the unknown. I had the boys vaccinated for possible diseases that now I can’t even remember (something about stray, rabid dogs…) I couldn’t sleep. My heart raced. I lost my appetite. From mid-January until our departure on March 25th, I constantly second-guessed our decision. Eight weeks of my life were consumed by worry.
Finally the moment came, and we walked onto that non-stop flight to Hong Kong. And what happened? A magnificent week unfolded. We experienced the remarkable, the eye-opening, the delightful, the funny and the sobering. The boys handled the flights well. No one needed emergency medical care. No one got bitten by a dog. No one stepped off a curb into the path of an oncoming bus—or bicycle. We enjoyed interesting meals, and we communicated with smiles and hand gestures. Why had I worried? Why had I given up two months of my life to anxiety?
I learned many things—about the world, about our family, and about myself—during that trip to China, but one of the most important was a profound lesson in the futility of worry. In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 12: 22-31, Jesus says, “And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?” Why indeed? I lost a lot of time to worry, and for what result? Worrying during the weeks leading up to our departure figuratively shrank my life. Even if the trip had been a complete disaster, what possible benefit would I have gained by spoiling the preceding eight weeks as well?
Psychoanalyst Fritz Perls (1893-1970) said, “Anxiety is the gap between the now and the later.” During these past twenty years, when I find myself slipping into worry, I remember my fruitless anxiety in advance of our big trip. I shift my focus from the “later” to the “now,” and try to live with gratitude in the present. In retrospect, I think the lesson I learned from the eight weeks of worry was worth the emotional cost. The trip to China may not have added one cubit to my span of life, but it expanded my life, and for that, I am grateful.
