The best laid trip plans often don’t go as predicted, yet most people are fixated on their vacations going exactly as envisioned, for their escape from regular life to be some sort of fantastical dream. I certainly have had temptation, even while in the rest of my life I have learned to leer at perfectionism. This desire for things to toe the line of monumental expectations – for all the myriad schemes to come together as imagined and nothing to go sideways – is one of the biggest ailments that ruin travel, in my opinion.

I recently went to Japan and spent about three weeks there, mostly in Kyushu and on the islands. It was my second time there, but leading up to it, I was unhappy because I fixated on the things that could go wrong.

I was anxious about getting sick before leaving.

I was worried about flight cancellations due to the typhoons.

I was concerned about geopolitical events.

And all other manner of maybes.

Did any of those things happen? No. All that heightened concern was for nothing. As the old saying goes, we have so many worries in our lives, most of which are for things that never happen.

Worry is a plague. The same goes for rigidly over-planning.

Of all the things I planned on doing, I only touched a fraction of them. Itineraries are not real, they are a menu. When they meet reality, they are forced to compromise. I landed in Tokyo and it was raining – a lot. Two typhoons hit Japan while I was there. The first half of my trip had many days where I had to cancel plans. Did I do myself any good resisting that? Getting upset about it? Hardly. As if that could change the weather! There is no malice in it, just chance, and when we’re given a bad stroke of luck is it productive to complain and make a fuss? No, that only burns more of our precious time. Instead, adapting, letting go of expectations, and being open to the unknown and the unexpected – that’s how we roll with the unpredictable.

The featured image on this article is just that. I had no idea I’d find that viewpoint when hiking on Yakushima – people said the trails where closed. Yet I kept myself open, and tried anyway, and discovered that only HALF the trails were closed in that area, and not the one that took me there. The unexpected turned into a highlight. Even on the days of heavy rain, I stumbled across things that I never would have planned on. Encounters with locals and other travelers that warmed my heart, shops and souvenirs that were incredible, random streets and venues, observations… and just being in my own head, forced to confront myself and learn about my tendencies.

You can have the best time on a trip where things don’t go as planned.

You can have the worst time even when the plan is followed to the letter.

It all depends how you think about it. The mind can make joy out of misery and misery out of joy, and the same goes for circumstances.

That’s the cure. To let go. To stop clinging to how things should be. To open yourself up to life in all of its different tides and seasons. Things go right and things go wrong – that’s life. Are our travel plans exempt from that? No! And why should they be? Travel is not about leisure, at least not for me. It is about education. Not just learning about other cultures, but learning about myself, and how can I learn if I’m not challenged? Some of the best realizations, and most touching memories, arose from days when things were going poorly. Sure, the sunny days where things exceeded expectations were great… but life isn’t all about that, and we were not made to only ride such calm, glassy waters.

The point of travel is to go on a journey, and journeys are meant to be instructive, not just predictable sandboxes where we can use our credit cards to magically finetune our experience.

Life will test you. Life will teach you. No matter where you are.

Embrace it.