We felt like kids again.
When we walked in to our writing workshop one evening, our group leader had pulled out her sand tray and displayed a variety of miniatures for us to work with a la sand play therapy.
“Create your vacation,” she urged us at the end of our workshop, and we did.
Yocheved put herself on a secluded beach, a book near her, some food, and as she pondered the little menchies, debated whether or not her children were invited. Her husband was somewhere; she didn't know where.
Miriam set up an exotic location, a museum, a pagoda, a parade of people in a busy city center. It was very colorful and crowded in her sand tray. Noisy too.
All Yehudis needed for her sand tray was a bed. She dug out a little cave and placed a bed inside. Some dark. A little quiet. She too placed a book on the side. She doubted she would even get to read it.
We laughed as our group members revealed their ideal vacations, and then regretfully, because it was already past midnight, drove back home; our sand trays the closest most of us would get to a vacation until we won the lottery. Or finished all our work. Or finally married off our last kid. And nobody was having a baby that particular second that needed our grandmothering. Or Pesach could be postponed for a coupla years.
Growing up, my father loved to travel.
When I was in fifth grade, as a family (what were my parents thinking?) they shlepped us around the world on a vacation extravaganza. First Israel with cousins and family. Then off to Greece where we cruised for a week around the islands, landing up in Athens of old. We ended off in Hungary, touring my father's birthplace.
Until today I remember the thrill of picking up a stone at one of the ruins of Athens and feeling the pure exhilaration of holding a relic of the ancient world in my palm of my hand. Until today, I remember my shock and amazement listening to children speak Hungarian in Budapest. I was sure that only grandparents over age ninety were privy to that secret language.
I bet you think vacation is a luxury. I bet you think that vacations are for people who have time to spare. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Living in modern society, where technology has freed us up an overabundance of time, we cram into those extra hours a life lived to nanosecond.
It's simple math.
If my microwave can deliver me a hot meal in twenty minutes instead of the hour it takes the chicken to bake in the oven; if my computer program can calculate that which once I needed to do with my brain over a few hours, then I have quite a few hours left in my day. Which makes sense that I should use to relax. Recharge my depleted batteries. But no, instead, I use that time to cram yet still more responsibilities into my day.
I have a few more hours?
Another project. Another yes to volunteering. Another commitment. How can I say no? I have so many more hours free. Especially when I do not live by the silly notions of how the day begins at sunrise and ends at sundown. I do the sunrise part, but I can ignore sundown with the marvelous invention of light bulbs. There is still so much I can do, especially living in the city where stores are open past midnight, where the city streets are abundantly lit to fool our senses into thinking it is still day. Or maybe just still dawn.
So vacation is a necessity. Vacation is especially a necessity for those who have no time to spare, because we do not know how to vacation in the little pockets of down time throughout the day without throwing ourselves into another frenzied activity to fill those spaces.
You want to know why we vacation?
We vacation because it is fun to see new places or try out new things. It is wonderful to have uninterrupted time (that may be too ambitiously stated; there is no place our computers or phones fail to have service....) to spend time with those we love. Family. Friends. We vacation because we simply want to sleep. Or eat a meal we did not have to cook. Or take a break from tasks that we do not enjoy. Or, maybe we enjoy our work and ironing, but not working or ironing has its attractions as well.
We vacation to do things we simply do not have time to do otherwise. To read. To walk. To exercise. To talk. To laugh.
And research studies are giving us the permission we need.
Because it is hard for us to justify leaving our children. Or even justify the expense. The bother of asking others for favors. Babysit our kids. Take over my work load. Cook Shabbos for me so when I come back, I can take all my kids back and eat at home. We find it hard to justify all those favors, all that wasted money just because we want to have fun for a few days.
I do not know about you, but I looked forward to having my babies. Two days of absolutely no responsibilities hanging out at the hospital. And for some of my friends, that was their yearly vacation. Nu, where are their vacation excuses now that they are forty five?
So here is what research is proving:
People who go on vacation alleviate stress in their lives that continues to positively impact them physiologically long after the vacation is over.
Alleviating stress is huge. And here's how:
People who vacation are thinner. With alleviated stress, they break their patterns of mindless eating that is a major cause of overweight. Digestion is improved. People who vacation have improved sleep patterns. Healthy sleep patterns improve daily functioning at work. Better decision making. Better memory retention. Less irritability. People who vacation have healthier bodies physically. Lower levels of cortisol, which are stress hormones that wreak havoc on a body if elevated.
A lousy three days of vacation show these drastic improvements even five weeks later.
Two to three vacations a year rather than one longer one is recommended for your health.
But there's more.
When a person travels to a new country, even a new state, they are exposed to a new environment to people who have a different way of thinking. Opening your mind to this kind of experience and looking at the world from a different perspective crosses over to your life even when you return from vacation. That crossover of perspective is what expands a person's ability to open their minds to new ideas at work, creative solutions, and to view their own lives differently.
In general, creating distance from your life, even for a short time, enlarges your capacity to view your unhealthy patterns, your troubled relationships, your not-that-great—and even harmful—life choices from the awareness that the distance forces you to notice.
Vacations make a person drag themselves out of their daily rut, that groove they mindlessly fall into day after day. Changing scenery can awaken the senses, sharpen color and sound and appreciation and love for the beautiful world, for the beautiful people, for the beautiful life we live in.
You know what that reminds me of?
Each year when I come back from the bungalow colony, even if I have been there only for the weekend, when I hit the city streets of my neighborhood, I am shocked at where I have chosen to live. The grayness of the streets, the noise and stench of pollution assaulting me, the streets strewn with garbage repulsive. Inevitably I ask my husband, “Why are we living in such an ugly place?” Yet, after a few days, or few weeks, the ugliness grows on me and I can actually walk the streets and not notice the smells and garbage.
Vacation forces us to face the smells and garbage of our lives. It can be the catalyst to make change, the force bumping us out of the inertia of our repetitive, often unthinking existence.
Vacations are for burns. You know which kind.
“I am burned out,” you sometimes hear people say. “I am just totally burned out.”
Burnout is real. We can get burned out at work, even burned out of parenting over and over and over. Of cleaning the same house that just gets messy again, of cooking again and again when it just gets eaten over and over and over. Our work, as homemakers, as teachers, therapists, or secretaries, have a stale feel to it. It's the feeling of not being able to smell the delicious aroma of challos baking because you live in a bakery and it ceases to create an impact.
Vacations take us out of the bakery and remind us again how delicious it is to bake challos for Shabbos, how there is nothing like the smell of homemade challos in the oven on an erev Shabbos. Especially when we come back to our homes and families and jobs, and there is that simple pleasure of home, of coming home, that just feels right. It's how vacation makes us homesick for those simple pleasures we have forgotten how to feel locked up in the bakery store for too long.
Vacations are for the kids were were playing in the sandtray.
Vacations are for bringing us back to the kids we were before stress and burnout and insomnia and emotional eating and anxiety and poor decision making and the dulling of the senses.
Booking tickets, anyone? I'm coming too!
NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BINAH MAGAZINE AS A FEATURE ARTICLE
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