We recently went on vacation. A warm beach vacation. In Pennsylvania where we live, the weather is starting to warm up but it is by no means warm weather season yet, therefore making it the perfect time to escape to somewhere warm and skip out on at least a few days of the teasing spring weather.
Now I love going on vacation—despite what my friends and family may say—I’m not a total weirdo! But there is a lot to do to get ready to go away: someone has to watch the dog, the cats need to be checked on, loose ends in the business need to be taken care of, on and on the list goes. I found myself thinking, is this even worth it . . . all the loose ends, the touching base with people, and the packing! Wouldn’t it be easier to just stay home? Well, yes, of course it would! But at what cost? What about the magical part of going away?
When I was little, for several years my family used to go to the Bahamas in the spring and, though I was very young, I vividly remember the unbridled excitement I felt about going away—unsullied by the adult concerns of packing and last minute details. Furthermore, since I was so little, I had no concept of time and it was always a bit of a surprise when I realized it was the night before the big trip! My mom had a cassette tape (starting to show my age a little!) and we would listen to the Beach Boys’ song, Kokomo, on the way to the airport. That was the moment when I would be bouncing in my plastic car seat with excitement! We were going to the beach! The ocean! The water! Warm weather! Pretty flowers! (The Hibiscus bushes where we stayed, I remember, were always covered in the most exotic of blooms.)
Conjuring up these memories just a few days before leaving on my adult beach vacation I had to ask myself—what happened? What happened to that feeling of unbridled excitement that I felt as a little girl? Why did I no longer want to bounce in my chair at the realization that we were going on vacation?!
The simple answer is—I grew up. I now have adult responsibilities, and have had more experiences, more vacations, and it is easy to become jaded. But why do we settle for this excuse so easily?
Life is still full of experiences as new and joyful as they were when we were young, but it is the way we approach these experiences that changes. We go on vacation expecting that something won’t be to our standards rather than thinking about how wonderful every minute of this experience will be. We compare the experience we are having with past or similar experiences to see if this one measures up—not only measures up but surpasses past experiences and if it doesn’t we want to put a red x next to it.
What if we approached new experiences and vacations from the point of view that we did as children? Excited and full of expectation that we are going to have so much fun! What if we stopped killing the magic of every experience and abandon ourselves to the pure joy of living in the moment? What if we embraced the magic, not just on special days in our lives, but every day? What if we lived everyday looking at it as the magical gift that it really is?