As I’m getting ready to go on vacation, I’m thinking about
all the positive things that accompany this time off. I find it exciting to just have a break in
my routine. Routines can be comforting
and predictable, but they can also become rigid and boring. One of my friends has a simple definition of
vacation: No Chores. I think it is this
absence of chores that frees up energy and opens us up to adventure and new
experiences. It allows me to be more in
the moment. I become more attentive and
curious about my surroundings. I day dream and find a better balance between
activity and rest.
Often we don’t even know how much we’ve been pushing
ourselves, how much we’ve ignored our body’s messages to slow down. Or how much we’ve denied ourselves downtime and
find instead some project that has to be finished. I’m often surprised at how tired I feel the
first few days of vacation. My body
seems to be telling me that it has needed rest for some time and it now intends
to take it.
Vacations provide me with an excuse to unplug. I loosen the obsessive pull to check
messages and return phone calls. I take
a holiday from the news. I reengage in
things I love, like photography. I
sharpen my sense of perception and see the beauty around me.
One year when I lived in Italy I was introduced to the
European tradition of taking the month of August off. I was shocked. Taking an entire month off for vacation seemed
extravagant. Then as I considered this more, it seemed not
strange, but the epitome of sanity. Americans
not only don’t take this much time off, our work ethic seems to push us in the
opposite direction. Sociologist say we work
longer hours, take fewer vacation days and retire later than workers in other
industrialized countries.
Can this propensity
to shoulder on, to skip vacations or take work with us while on vacation, be
healthy? Some recent studies are
showing the dangers of ignoring the need for downtime.
A study by the time share company RCI found that "Women who took a vacation at
least twice a year had a 50 percent lower chance of developing coronary heart
disease than women who took a vacation once every six years or less. For men, taking more frequent annual
vacations reduced the relative risk of dying of heart disease by almost 30
percent.”
Certainly this information tells us something important about
finding balance between work and play.
We sleep at night so our bodies have time to rest, rebuild, and
repair. Our psyche needs the same. Vacations offer us that opportunity. They allow us to reduce stress and engage in
experiences we find pleasurable. They
elicit playfulness and provide the leisure to dream and imagine. If this all seems frivolous just remember
that Albert Einstein was almost kicked out of college for daydreaming. He maintained that he discovered the theory
of relativity by gazing at sunbeams and fantasizing about what it would be like
to ride on them into the universe.
“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to
the conclusion that the flight of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent
for absorbing positive knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
