Two Minds

I’m staring up at the departure board, trying to find the gate for my flight to Manila. The purpose is to buy a car and although I’m about to embark on an eight hour flight to another country, I still haven’t decided whether I’m doing the right thing.

There’s still time to back out. I could fly to Manila, look at a few cars, decide the whole thing is madness, and come home having done nothing more reckless than eat a questionable airport sandwich. Nobody would have to know.

The problem is that I keep having the same argument with myself, and it keeps ending the same way.

The Head

My head has the stronger case, and it has chosen this exact moment to press it. The sensible thing, it reminds me, is to stand up, go home, get another job, and bank the redundancy payment. Top up the savings. Knock down the mortgage. Behave like an adult with a future.

It’s a good argument. It’s the one any responsible person would make, and the one I’d make to anyone else sitting where I’m sitting.

But this argument includes a niggling question my head would rather skip; set myself up for what? As best I can tell, the goal would be to become financially secure enough to take an epic overland adventure at some later date — by which time it will involve a hip replacement, orthopaedic shoes, and a firm preference for being home by four. I’d be choosing to save my money to take the trip at the point in my life I’m too old to enjoy it.

The Heart

My heart’s case is simpler, and far less responsible. It points out, correctly, that I will never again have this exact set of circumstances at once: no job, no dependents, a redundancy payment burning a hole, and nothing but time. That alignment is rare, and it doesn’t wait around.

It is, of course, a terrible financial decision. There’s a real chance I vanish from the job market for a year and come back to find it has moved on without me — that I return tanned, rested, and quietly unemployable. My heart has no answer to this. My heart has never balanced a budget in its life and isn’t about to start. It just keeps changing the subject to the Pamir Highway.

The Parents

My parents would prefer I didn’t go. They think it’s irresponsible, and they’d be even less impressed to learn I’m writing this from the airport. They have history on their side, too — the last time I left the country without a clear plan, I was seventeen and ended up phoning them for money from somewhere near the Turkish border. Their position is reasonable, well-meaning, and built on two decades of evidence.

I love them for it. But I’ll probably also dismiss their concerns.

The Reset

Underneath all of it is something that doesn’t fit neatly in a spreadsheet. After twenty years of work and a redundancy I didn’t choose, I think I need to stop for a while. Not a holiday. A proper stop. Long enough to work out what I actually want, rather than what the next job happens to need.

A road trip across the world is an absurd way to go about this. It is also, for reasons I can’t fully defend, the only one that feels right.

Boarding

They’ve just called my flight.

I still haven’t won the argument, and I’m not sure I ever will. But I’ve noticed I’m on my feet, bag over my shoulder, joining the queue — which is its own kind of answer.

Whatever I keep telling myself about keeping my options open, the truth is simpler. I’m getting on the plane. And somewhere in the next few days, in a car yard on the far side of the world, this stops being something I argue about and becomes something I’ve done.