the true essence of escape: return

Why do people take vacations? That was the question asked in a meeting at work the other day. That was the question that initiated a conversation around vacation trends and a deep dive into the motivations of our vacation audience. What drives people to take a vacation? What do they hope to get out of it?

A statistic that brought this article to being: 56% of Americans value “escapism” in a vacation. They take a vacation to “escape for a bit”. This is a bump up from 52% in 2019. I found it a bit hard to concentrate after hearing this. As my coworkers were nodding and beginning to think of ways we could tap into this valued escapism through marketing strategies, I was on some philosophical journey in my head.

What does it mean to escape? What feelings come along with escaping? Beneath the surface perception lies a deeper truth. It’s not as much of an escape as it is a voyage of return - a return to oneself, to Mother Earth, to the simple joys of life, and to a sense of natural mindfulness we unfortunately rarely experience in our day to day lives.

I say “natural” mindfulness, because it is something that we were all brought into this world with. A pure, clear, understanding of our 5 senses at all times, a strong grounding to the where, what, when, who, and how of the moment we were in, and not any other moment prior or beyond it.

So can we say that an escape is really a return to the present moment? And an escape from re-thinking the past and setting expectations for the future? You’re pulling your roots from “what was” and “what might be”, and planting them in “what is”. A lot can happen in the “what is”. We have much more control over what happens here than what happens in the past and in the future.

When we think we’re escaping, getting out, or running away, we are returning, going in, and coming back.

Think of the last vacation you took, does it bring a smile to your face? I think we can all agree a good vacation can do that. A good vacation feels like a recharge. A good vacation will give you joyful memories and things to express gratitude towards. You may have experienced a new or strengthened connection to nature, to another human, or to yourself. You may have rediscovered an appreciation for simplicity. You may have felt relief- knowing the vacation is something you needed deeply.

Then comes time to return to the “real world”- to a flooded email inbox, responsibilities that feel like they’re a heavier weight than you can carry, your to-do list that’s a seemingly never ending column of boxes waiting to be checked off. Suddenly, you’re back. You’re immersed back into all of these things like you never left. The vacation, along with the beautiful feelings that you embraced, the version of yourself that you embodied, and the realizations you came to just slipped from your hands. Yeah, it was a great time, but back to the grind. That’s how the real world works right?

It can feel impossible to carry the elevated emotions we experience on a vacation into our everyday lives. We must understand that it’s not impossible to bring glimpses of this into our everyday, and even more that it’s extremely important and beneficial that we do so.

We must return to ourselves daily. Instead of escaping with the help of unhealthy distractions and coping mechanisms, we have to return, with effort directed towards cultivating love and kindness within and outside ourselves. Imagine if everyone took time to return each day, imagine how much more love and kindness would be flowing throughout the world, from human to human.

Why do people take vacations? My question is why aren’t people taking vacations every day?

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