I love to travel. When I was younger, it was about escaping my life. Trading in the mundane for the adventurous, the drab for the beautiful, the ordinary for the exciting.

For the past several years, travel has been my life. Which means I don’t get to leave anything behind, I just get to add something in. Mostly, I get to experience the greater vision of my life in a compact series of events. A microcosmic experience, one might say. (And I just really wanted to use the word microcosmic because it’s so darn cool, right?)

I am in the middle of a fairly significant trip – to a remote Greek island. I thought I was fairly familiar with this area, but had to resort to Google to figure out where this place was. I spent significant time planning my trip, with a combination of big flights, little flights, ferries and shuttles. It required greater coordination than most trips, as a few of the steps were severely limited – one flight per day, two ferries per day, limited road transportation. I thought I had nailed the perfect itinerary.

Then I arrived at the airport to find that my originating flight, the simplest of the lot, was delayed just enough to topple the entire remainder of the itinerary, like a set of dominoes. I had moments of panic, rage, indignation and fear at the airport. I had a hard deadline to meet. There were people waiting for me that I may or may not be able to inform I would be up to a whole day late.

Breathing helped. Especially as the airline employee refused to understand my timing constraints (at least, that’s what I experienced). I felt completely powerless, even as an ‘elite’ traveler, to navigate the complex world of air travel.

I was able, with an enormous amount of haggling, begging, threatening and even crying, to rebook myself, but could not get to one of the intermediate spots in time for the plan to stand. I would be one day late. No way around it.

The extra 3 hours at the airport I was gifted by Air Canada, as I waited for my newly booked flight, were spent undoing and redoing the remaining flights and ferries and hotel rooms. I lost some money on non-refundable tickets, but not as much as I could have. People were kind and helpful (in stark difference to the folks at Air Canada, I might add). I met a joyful gentleman who loved my iPad keyboard so much that he ordered one, right on the spot, for his wife. It was purple. He reminded me of Santa Claus.

I was pleased with myself that I found a reasonable alternative, came to terms with the extra time and money I had spent on a perfect itinerary that evaporated with one airline decision, and embarked on my adventure.

One of my steps was finding a very last minute hotel in Athens, Greece, a city I quite enjoy, but which I knew I would have no time to explore on this trip. I could have easily booked myself a room at the business hotel, just adjacent to the airport. It would have been a no-fail solution. Tested, simple, no surprises. I’m not sure what made me scroll down the list of available hotels and click on the one 25 minutes away, by the beach. I was tired and stressed, but I felt something pull me.

And here I sit. In this gem of a hotel, overlooking the sea, enjoying the kindness and beauty of the Greek people, in my little secret find.

I could not be happier about my choice. I feel like my adventure, although officially beginning one day later, has blossomed into something that’s happening right now.

That’s life isn’t it? We make plans, and God laughs, as they say. And then we end up in a small moment of absolute perfection that would never have happened if not for complete breakdown.

I think about the plans I had for my life, which did not include starting completely over at 40 with a new… everything. I think about the ‘mistake’ of my marriage and how that brought me the greatest human being to cross my path, my daughter, and a man who would become a trusted friend.

I thought about how we, who have access to nearly everything the world has to offer, take so easily for granted all that’s necessary for our plans to manifest. How the journey is everything. How blessed we are, I AM, to be able to do what I love while seeing the world and experiencing magic. All the time.

And I realize that’s perhaps why I travel now. To look at my great big life, in bite-sized portions, where the lessons come quick and hard. To feel, in real time, how things going right and things going wrong are both the same thing – big, juicy, gift-wrapped blessings.

And it doesn’t even require a single plane ride to do it.

Where can you find the adventure happening, right there under your nose?