The expression “beating a dead horse” has its origins in the mid-19th century. The expression “beating a dead horse” (or “flogging a dead horse” in British English) dates back to a time when the phrase is said to have been popularized by English politician John Bright. In March 1859, during a House of Commons debate about parliamentary reform, Lord Elcho remarked that Bright had not been satisfied with his “winter campaign” and that Bright had found he was “flogging a dead horse.” The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1872, when The Globe newspaper used it to describe Prime Minister William Gladstone’s futile efforts to defend a bill in Parliament. The idiom has two possible origin stories. The literal meaning comes from horse owners or riders who would hit horses to make them go faster. Obviously, if a horse were already dead, no amount of beating would make it move. Similarly, if a decision has already been made, no amount of discussing it will change it. It may also have originated in 17th-century sailor slang. Sailors were often paid one month’s wages in advance before a voyage to settle debts ashore. Working during this prepaid period was called “working for a dead horse” since they received no additional benefit. Ships’ crews would sometimes perform a “Flogging the Dead Horse” ceremony at the end of this first month to mark the point when they would start earning wages again. The expression has remained remarkably consistent in meaning over time, always referring to wasting effort on something futile or continuing to discuss an issue that has already been settled.
The Dead Horse in this household seems to be the notion of traveling less. We have been saying for several years that we would start traveling less next year, and Lo and behold, we hare doing three international trips this year, all three very much voluntary. Both Kim and I have travelled a lot in our lives. Me more than Kim given my eleven years of expatriate living in Latin America, Europe and Canada (not to mention two months in Tokyo). I also did tons of travel both east/west and north/south for travel over 45 years. Kim, on the other hand, travelled mostly for personal reasons but thanks to her sister Sharon, who was an international flight attendant who made sure her little sister got exposed to the world, and some work-related travel as a chaperone for middle school girls that she was teaching, she’s seen a lot of the world as well. As a couple we have traveled every year we’ve been together to some place or other outside the U.S. (with the exception of 2020-2021 compliments of COVID). We’ve done every continent other than Antarctica and even that we might be able to claim that we have been within sight of this past trip to Cape Horn. We’ve gone by plane, ocean liner, river boat and train and we both are left with a very short or nonexistent bucket list of places we haven’t been and want to go visit.
That and the increased hassle and cost of travel has caused us to constantly say that its time that we scaled back our international travel since we have more or less seen it all. Of course that’s not true, but we are certainly better traveled than most. I have yet to see the steppes of Asia Minor in the are of the “Stans” and Kim has yet to go to China, but both are problematical places to travel to at the moment. We were lucky we did Egypt and Jordan before the Gaza problems and our Baltics cruise that covered Finland, St. Petersburg and Estonia is no longer on offer from Viking and most other cruise companies. We’ve seen a fair bit of North Africa (Morocco and Egypt), been to West Africa (Benin) and done South Africa, though not so much in East Africa. Southeast Asia yes, Australia and New Zealand, yes, but Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea no so much. We will touch Eastern Europe again later this year by visiting Prague and we have done Budapest and Vienna. As for the Middle East, we have been all over Israel and I have travelled extensively in the Gulf, including sojourners to Pakistan. We’ve both done a nice long trip to India. So what is left are a few tag ends in Latin America (like the Galapagos, and for Kim, the Amazon) and that whole Central Asia area that we are unlikely to ever see, including Mongolia. I feel there is a valid basis for beating the dead horse that we have traveled enough. Kim does not disagree.
But something is always coming up nonetheless. This destination wedding trip to Tuscany didn’t tick any new boxes for us, but it did compel us to spend a week in Malta, a place that has long held down a small spot on my bucket list, Then Kim found flight for her craving for a Christmas Markets tour by landing on the Steam Dreams adventure that we will take from London to Edinburgh in November, and we will attach Prague to that for good measure (though I’ve been to Prague a few times and even been to its Christmas Market).
One of the key instigators of Kim’s travel Jones is Natasha. Natasha is a dedicated traveler, who loves nothing more than to flit off (usually by herself) to some exotic and foreign land to immerse herself in the local culture. She is forever saying that we need to go here or there or that we would love to see this or that. I came out into the living room this morning after a one hour business call with an expert witness target client. This assignment, which I think I stand a good chance of getting, would come to fruition in mid-2026, so well into the future. Expert Witness work is not unlike travel in that it requires a lot of advance planning. When I finished and came out to the see Kim and Natasha conspiring over travel plans I was not entirely surprised. Natasha had convinced Kim that the places she absolutely must see before she dies include Amsterdam and Provence, neither of which Kim has had the opportunity to enjoy as of yet. What I am sensing is that there may be a 2026 trip getting formulated that might find us back on continental Europe. Amsterdam is pleasant enough and easy to get to directly from San Diego and Provence is a place where my buddy Michael has a house. Since I will e seeing him in a few days, I will have to remember to plant the seed that we would love to borrow his villa there for a few days in 2026.
It turns out that even dead horses sometimes have a few laps left in them.