‘One day’

There are two words I hear often. Sometimes they’re spoken aloud and sometimes they sit beneath the surface of a conversation, almost unnoticed.

One day.

One day I’ll take that trip. One day I’ll learn Italian. One day I’ll spend a summer wandering through France. One day I’ll put myself first.

For many women, “one day” becomes a holding pattern.

Not because we lack curiosity, ambition or dreams, but because life has a remarkable way of convincing us that now is not the right time. There is always a reason.  A demanding role.  Family commitments.  Ageing parents. Financial responsibilities.  A partner who isn’t interested.  A friend who can’t quite commit.  The uncertainty of the world.  The uncertainty of ourselves.

And so we wait.   We become so busy managing life that we forget we are meant to be living it too.

One day slips away

The challenge with “one day” is that it sounds wonderfully responsible. It feels sensible, measured and patient. We tell ourselves we are simply waiting for circumstances to improve, for life to become less complicated or for the timing to be right.

Yet “one day” has a habit of quietly stretching into years.

Before we realise it, entire chapters have passed and the life we imagined for ourselves remains parked somewhere in the future.

Over the years, I’ve spoken with hundreds of women about travel. Women from every background imaginable. Successful women.  Quiet women. Adventurous women. Women who never considered themselves adventurous at all.

What fascinates me is that very few regret the things they have done. What they regret are the things they postponed.

The opportunities they talked themselves out of.  The invitations they declined.  The experiences they kept assigning to a future version of themselves; a woman who would somehow have more time, more confidence, more certainty and fewer responsibilities.

As though one morning they will wake up and discover they have become someone entirely different.

My own story

For years, I had a dream that sat patiently on a shelf.  I wanted to live in Italy for three months. Not visit. Live.

I imagined a small villa somewhere in Tuscany or Umbria. Mornings spent wrestling with the Italian language, afternoons wandering local markets, evenings with a glass of wine watching village life unfold around me.  It wasn’t a holiday I wanted.  It was La Dolce Vita in my favourite place in the world.  My chance to slow down and experience life as the Italians do.

I would do it one day.

There was always a reason to postpone it. Work was busy. The timing wasn’t quite right. There would be another year, another opportunity, another season.

Then, two years ago, a neurological disease arrived uninvited and changed the equation.  Today I receive treatment every 28 days and missing those appointments isn’t an option.  The dream of disappearing into Italy for three months is no longer realistically available to me.

And if I’m honest, there are moments when that stings.  Not because Italy disappeared.  But because I assumed the opportunity would always be there.

It’s a reminder I carry with me often now. None of us knows what is around the corner. Life can change in a moment.

I don’t share this because I think we should rush through life or say yes to every opportunity that presents itself. Quite the opposite.

I share it because so many of us live as though the things that matter most can simply wait until later.  Yet life rarely clears a perfect path and presents us with the ideal moment.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve become less interested in one day, and far more interested in now.

What’s interesting is that I’m not alone.

Women are changing

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a subtle but significant shift among women. Whether through conversations at dinners, on our tours, over a glass of wine in a hotel lounge, or simply chatting with my friends, something seems to be changing.

Many of us are becoming less interested in accumulating things and more interested in collecting experiences. Less interested in waiting and more interested in living.

We’re beginning to question the assumption that there will always be another season, another opportunity, another chance to do the things that call to us. Instead, we’re recognising that the experiences we dream about are not simply purchases to be made at some point in the future. They are chapters of our lives waiting to be lived.

Economists call this the experience economy.

Personally, I think women understand it rather differently.  To me, it feels more like the freedom economy.

It is a shift away from accumulation and towards possibility. Away from postponement and towards participation. Away from saving our dreams for a future version of ourselves and towards embracing them now, while they are still available to us.

I see it in the woman who finally books the journey she has talked about for years. The woman who stopped waiting for friends to commit. The woman who decided she no longer need permission, validation or perfect timing before saying yes to something she truly wants.

Not because she has become reckless.  But because she has made a decision.

Women know that experiences continue to enrich us long after they are over. A beautiful dinner becomes a memory. A memory becomes a story. A story becomes part of who we are.

And unlike many of the things we buy, those stories tend to grow more valuable with time.