Where You Are Affects Who You Are, or Back To "The Geography of Bliss"

After every vacation the kids will talk about their favorite moment and this time was no different. 

Elephant seals, dolphins in Santa Cruz, the Musee Mechanique in San Francisco, surfing and boogie boarding in Encinitas, riding horses north of Santa Barbara, the safari tents, Bart's Books in Ojai, marbles with Uncle Ethan, Aunt Heather and Grandma Bonnie and betting the ponies at Del Mar.

These were the agreed upon highlights, and when they ask me what my favorites were, I agree with them that all of those were great, but my super favorites were moments like the one in this picture.  Sitting on Moonstone Beach near the tide pools sifting through the stones, all of us finding "the one" over and over and over again. 

If Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Bliss is right, then as he stated in an interview (http://www.twelvebooks.com/)  you can "change your environment and you can change your life. This isn’t running away from your problems but simply recognizing that where we are affects who we are."

I agree with him and even though his book is about more than the vacational-geographic moments of bliss attached to a fleeting experience, I think the idea holds just as true.

As a working mom I don't often have the variety of experiences with my kids each day in which I can be a variety of people with them, but on vacation I can be "professor mom" at the California Academy of Sciences, "silly mom" at the Musee Mechanique, 'football mom' on the beach in Encinitas, "tickle monster" in the pool  and "fire cooker mom" at El Capitan Canyon north of Santa Barbara, "crazy betting mom" at Del Mar....I love these experiences because it is the geography that allows me to be completely free of expectations other than my and their own.

And, no longer how many years go by, I know I can look at the picture above and feel the blissful person that was me in that moment, in that place.