Skipping Vacations is Not a Badge of Honor

Filed in archive Happiness on June 12, 2006

Ever meet someone who proudly declares s/he hasn't had a vacation in six years? As if you should shake your head in wonder at the depths of workaholism this person has stooped to? As if you should feel a little guilt for being "soft" and having strayed from your true love, the almighty Work?

These people are pathetic, and you will be too if you follow in their footsteps.

My wife and I celebrated our anniversary this weekend. We were together a few years before we got married and have 9 years of marriage under our belts, so we had lots to reminisce about. We began loosely ranking the very best days of our time together. After the gimme of listing the birth of our children, almost every other thing we came up with was a vacation or a particular event that happened on vacation.

We talked about our honeymoon in Spain. (I should note that we blew all our cash wedding gifts toward this honeymoon; not a wise financial decision starting out, but no regrets.) One day we stayed in a parador (an old castle made into a hotel) in a small town called Olite, and by chance that Sunday was the Corpus Christi celebration, and as we got breakfast in the center of town, flower petals were laid in a circle on the ground and down an alley that soon filled with a huge procession of the people of the town. Everyone was dressed up, little girls had white dresses on and were throwing flower petals at the priest as he talked. We stood out like sore thumbs in our casual American dress, but it actually made people very friendly toward us, as there were very few tourists in the town. We couldn't have planned for that event, which is why we'll never forget it.

Just like we won't forget Assisi in Italy, where a group of nuns formed a circle and started dancing while we had a late evening drink, and a group of German children gave us a songbook to join in with them as they sang in the main piazza that same night.

And we won't forget our kids playing in the fountain in Chicago's Milennium Park, or playing on the beach during our cut-rate Florida vacation, staying at a private home within a resort area that had been closed down due to hurricane damage. For a week it seemed we owned a beach, as we saw only 4 or 5 people stroll past each day.

We're not rich people--but it's easier than ever to travel cheaply. I've accrued miles via airline credit cards, my wife has done the same through occasional job travels, plus the Internet gives you the opportunity to find new places and good deals that you could have never dreamed of finding in the past.

But you have to take the vacations.

Sitting in your office until 7PM and never missing a day might win you some accolades and it might even win you more money, but at some point you have to ask what it's making you miss out on.

We all need to make money, and there's no doubt that work inevitably invades our "real" lives, making us miss an event we want to go to, or making us schedule a vacation at a time that may not be our first choice.

But if you're skipping time away altogether, you're stupid and you're going to wind up dead.

Actually, we're all going to wind up dead, and that's why you shouldn't be skipping vacations.

Think back on your life. Were the highlights when you were stressed, tired, overworked? Or when you were relaxed, spending time with people you cared about?

Make some money. Get a promotion. Then get the hell out of there for a while.