Going to a school out of state is hard in more ways than one, but perhaps the hardest aspect is missing the people and the campus during the summer. Pepperdine is especially hard to be away from, because who wouldn’t miss the daily ocean views and warm weather?

So I decided to take a spontaneous road trip down to Malibu, picking up a friend along the way. The trip was planned in between flights the day I came home from Texas. That next day, I drove out bright and early at 7 a.m. and let me tell you, that time of day is absolutely beautiful. I should see it more often. I was in the car for 11 hours that day—I guess Malibu is just that good.

We spent the trip roaming around Malibu, with absolutely no schedule, no priorities, no expectations. We never stayed more than one night in the same apartment/house/dorm room. The only plans we had for the vacation were our sleeping arrangements, the rest was totally up to us.

Now for some people, the thought of not having a plan is somewhat terrifying—not knowing at least some general sense of schedule, not having a specific time to be up and ready by, having too many choices of places to explore during the day—all can be quite overwhelming. And to some extent, I am that person. Of course, I am not one to make up a minute-to-minute itinerary, but I also like to have some sense of the plan.

Bottom line, we took those empty days and filled them as we went along, doing whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to.

And you know what?

It was incredible.

You see, if there’s one thing this trip taught me, it’s that sometimes we don’t need a plan. Sometimes it’s totally okay to let go and see what happens, to throw caution and reason out of the window and see where life takes you. It’s so easy to get caught up in our day to day schedules, worrying about deadlines and projects and other minuscule things that cause us more stress than happiness. It’s so easy to focus in on the smaller picture that we lose sight of what’s important. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we sometimes just need to let go, to realize that we can’t be in control of everything. As someone who gets slightly anxious when there isn’t a resemblance of a schedule, not having any plans was unnerving, but it also taught me that some of the best things in life are the things that happen unexpectedly. Sometimes the best parts of our lives are those moments or people that come into our lives unexpectedly, unannounced and totally not according to our plans.

All in all, the spontaneous trip was fun and full of adventures, but perhaps some of my favorite moments were the ones where we sat back with a group of friends and had good conversations or simply just savored the joy in being in each others’ presence because it was in those unexpected moments that were so beautiful. I didn’t mind not having a plan because I was too focused on the good friends sitting in front of me.

There are many things in life that demand our attention—family, friends, work, school—but sometimes we need to sit back, clear our calendars, and simply enjoy the fact that we are alive.