Traveling to Oneself and Back

I am sure that many people currently feel like I do. The fresh return from vacation and back to the life circumstances we have chosen for ourselves.

This is not a text about post-vacation depression, but an attempt to perceive the reality in which we live. This is a text dedicated to employers who must one day understand that a worker, in order to be a worker, must be a human being. And to be a human being, one must have space for different contemplations about their own life. 

With whichever soul I have spoken to who recently returned from vacation, I felt the weight and bitterness of their return. 

‘I finally was the person I used to know,’ ‘Only now do I see that I would change so much in my life,’ ‘If only there were a little more money’… It’s not that people are not eager to continue where they left off, but they are not at all ready to accept the life they led just two or three weeks ago. 

These are serious matters that we generally do not want to think about during the year, we push our dissatisfaction under the rug, hoping that better days will come. If nothing else, vacation. A mirror we should be afraid of because it clearly tells us who we are when stripped of work, depressing news, and all the things we do not want to do and be. Anyone with a Facebook profile could have noticed an influx of ‘self-help’ quotes – be yourself, don’t stop dreaming, don’t care what others think, don’t be a sheep, etc. Those who live such messages do not need reminders on social media. 

Sometimes I envy a dear friend and colleague who at the beginning of the year left everything behind with her partner and went to live in Thailand (they currently live in Bali). It took courage, especially when you are no longer a kid. No matter how much their photos of white sand and turquoise sea tempt me, I wonder if it takes more courage to leave or to stay. I wonder if she is truly happier and if she has found what she was looking for. 

I also wonder if I would be happier if I had a little more money. Just a little, let’s say if the state didn’t take at least 60 percent of my income, but left me just enough to be free in choosing when I travel or go shopping. Anyone who has at one point shared my fate and lost their job could face their own demons eye to eye. 

Can a person bring a smile to their face when they are at the bottom? Not to lament, but to open up and accept the fate that is currently grinding them down. Difficult, but not impossible. Throughout my life, I have met people with a lot of money. They all have the same anatomy and likewise their demons. However, I have always preferred people who have less; they seemed freer to me. A person is most open when they have nothing to lose, provided they remain human. Because when you return from vacation with such heavy conclusions, you must have made a mistake somewhere. You left behind your essence and surrendered to inertia. And that can be a real bitch. 

If you do not take advantage of the little time while the urge for change still burns within you, it will envelop you before you realize that you are once again lying in its heavy embrace. In two weeks of vacation, we do not have time to reach the right answers, but we must not forget the right questions. We must not forget which moments make us happy and relaxed, which give us the strength to see things from a broader perspective, without drama and trauma. Because that is us, stripped of external influences. And if we fail to change anything, if we cannot reach the right answers, perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. The fear of change is a dangerous epidemic that rules individuals and masses. 

Life will never fully resemble a vacation, but that does not mean that we cannot sometimes take a break from the life we know. Only then might we gather the strength for change.