Love Letter to the World

“Taking the Long View” by Stephanie Bennett Vogt

Hi everyone!

It took me a month, but I just completed my passion project; something that I’ve wanted to create for two years and never had time for (or made the time for): a video of a five-month trip around the world. Some of you may remember my daily postings on Instagram of this dream-come-true global experience that I shared with my husband in 2018. Well, this is the movie version.

With photos and video clips that I took with my iPhone, culled and woven together with some fabulous music and a lot of heart, the video below is my love letter to our beautiful planet. May this little movie lift and move you. May it inspire hope for our world and our future.

Before you scroll down to the bottom to watch it, however, I invite you to read what I wrote here first. It provides some added context to the story I tried to tell with my images.

This piece is 33 minutes long. And like a very rich meal, you will enjoy it a lot more if you set aside time to savor it. You will also enjoy it a lot more with sound (way) up on a device larger than a phone.

Enjoy and happy (armchair) travels!
xo
Stephanie

The backstory

In 1987 my husband, Jay, and I went on a trip around the world as part of a belated honeymoon. With one tiny bag that could fit under the seat in front of us, we flew from Boston and headed one way – west – until we returned home five months later. It was wonderful adventure that left us hungry for more. Because we were on such a tight budget back then, many of the countries on our original wish list got dropped (like basically the entire Southern Hemisphere!). We promised each other that one day we would rectify that.

Fast forward 30 years

Then it happened: A world cruise on its maiden voyage; a greatest-hits offering of every country we’d always dreamed of visiting one day – from world heritage sites to bucket list destinations, to places that would give us an experience we never imagined having in our lifetime, like crossing the Panama Canal and meeting a Komodo dragon. It would be the same five months as before, just a lot slower, no packing and unpacking, and no jet lag.

It took us exactly ten seconds to say YES!

Living wonder

When you travel at 15 knots, you can’t help but slow down and notice that there is beauty everywhere – not just in the exotic destinations that are every bit as wondrous as you can imagine, but in the ordinary, day-to-day moments, too, like the mesmerizing eyes of a kid you photographed in India, or watching how food gets delivered to your ship, or a car ferry full of people on the Suez Canal erupting with joy when they see you sailing by.

Even the endless sea days felt wondrous: how the water color could go from the deepest blue to the most translucent; or how much colder it got as we headed south from the equator to New Zealand; or how the ship would gently rock us in our sleep every night. (I have never slept better!)

Feeling the love

It is hard not to feel like royalty when you are treated as such – not just by the exceptionally talented and dedicated staff and crew who stole our hearts, but by all the bright lights (tour guides, bus drivers, willing subjects for my photos…) we met on our many shore excursions. You can’t help but feel the love when you’re surrounded by big hearts everywhere you go; when people the world around, regardless of social and economic status, are so eager to meet you with huge grins and open arms.

I still tear up when I think of the longshoremen pulling us into their world: catching our ship’s enormous mooring lines, looping them onto pier posts (called “bitts”), and securing our ship in a “we’ve got your back” kind of way. Conversely, I never tired of watching them untie the lines and fling them back when it was time for us to leave their world. The feeling of continuously being held and being released were some of the most poignant moments of human connection that I will never forget.

Dreaming big

I recognize just what a privilege and a blessing it is that we got to spend a “semester at sea” – aware that not everybody has the time, bandwidth, or means to do something as epic as this, especially with a partner and soulmate who shares the same penchant for exploration and self-discovery. It makes this experience all the more remarkable and special.

But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. It took a lot of intention and attention – penny-saving, planning, prioritizing, patience, perseverance, a willingness to risk an uncertain outcome and receive a whole lot of good juju from the universe – for this dream to come true.

It reminds me of a passage I wrote in one of my books about dreaming big: “If you have a passion for anything, do it… Do it not because of some desired outcome, but because your soul depends on it!”

Remembering what matters

I hope you’ll agree that there’s a lot of soul in this moving slide show (be sure to turn up the sound). May its images transport you around our beautiful planet and give you a taste of that timeless beauty and magic that is very much alive and well in all of us – even as things appear more dire and bleak than ever.

May it remind you of this truth by the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu: “When you realize that there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

PS., For more photos and stories of this adventure, visit @spaciousway on Instagram: (search hashtag #slowboatseries for photos and videos. For additional Stories, click “Sail Away 1” and “Sail Away 2.”)