I was talking the other day with a guy who’d just gotten back from a nice, long, sunny, warm (need I go on?) vacation. We were wondering how to describe those qualities that are so exquisitely felt when we’re relaxed and away, and how to bring them back home. We came up with three: A Slowing of Time, An Expansion of Space, and A Decrease of Import.
Time: Sooner or later on vacation, we start to slow down. Ahhh…Really, I think we simply begin experiencing the passage of time. In our regular lives, it’s so easy for time to be marked not by experience, but by a conception of how many things we have to do in a particular packet of time, be it an hour, day, or a week.
Space: This is about perspective, distant vistas. It’s the cave man first lifting his head up to the stars. There’s something about experiencing the space around us that brings a broader perspective and helps us to slow down. And as with Time, our regular lives can so easily close in on us and limit our horizon. We may glance up, but not really experience. We simply reference it, and hurry on.
Import: Another nice thing about vacation is that the most important thing we usually have to decide is where to go to dinner. Vacation decisions rarely have the same urgent, critical feeling that decisions tend to have in our regular lives. There are obviously important things we have to deal at home, but agitation can build up to the point where which bank line we stand in, or what shirt to wear, feels way more important than it truly is.
Our regular lives tend to compress time, shrink space, and inflate importance. Vacations tend to do the opposite. So how to bring the vacation home? This may sound naive, but it works: slow down, look around, remember what’s most important. It sounds naive because it’s a simple thing to do for a moment. But it doesn’t work if only done for a moment. And it’s very hard to do for 10 straight moments, incredibly hard for a 100. But making the effort to do some number in between will change your day for the better, guaranteed.