On the Importance of Taking Vacations
January 23, 2010 @ 1:42 am
Four months ago I returned from vacation. It was unlike any vacation I had ever taken before—in that, the principle objective was to simply relax. This may sound obvious, but most vacations I have taken have actually involved very little relaxing. Most days I sat on the beach reading books next to my wife instead of hustling around an over-populated city seeking thrills and art from the ages. That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy those types of holidays, because I do, but after a year of long work weeks I needed something different. I needed to slow down.
And this got me thinking, maybe people don’t vacation enough. I’m not talking about those people that work 80+ hours a week trying to build a company or get ahead in their career and won’t ever take the time to take a vacation. Although, I am sure many of them could use a vacation, I think the people that need it the most are the nine-to-fivers that suffer through work days that resemble Groundhog Day.
I can’t help but think we would have lower rates of social dysfunction if people took more vacations. It seems that instead of absorbing the experiences this world has to offer, we delve into accumulating material possessions that do little to further our character and circumstance. We compete with our peers to amass things that act as a translucent facade around our characterless selves. Perhaps if our competition was more experience based, we’d have less social disease and war.