Holidays! Holidays? What the hell is that word? Can a holidaymaker tell me what holidays are for someone like me who is no longer in the job market?
What is the difference between “vacation” and “retirement”? If I no longer work, am I on perpetual vacation? No, because “vacation” means, for most humans, total rest, travel, change of scenery, and expenses too.
This also means suspending for a time domestic work, cleaning, meal preparation. Which would mean that if we stay at home, on our terrace, in our garden, if we continue to take care of cleaning, washing and meals, we cannot say that we are on vacation.
I would be inclined to believe that it is indeed difficult to feel like you are on holiday if you stay at home. If, in addition, you do not change your habits and routine, if you continue the daily grind, it is completely impossible.
Beginning
Another essential thing to feel like you’re on vacation: you need to know from which day this vacation time begins and which day it ends. And it is certainly desirable that you know these two dates a little in advance. The vacation time must have been, for a certain time, time to come.
If, by chance, we happen to have a certain number of quiet days, we cannot consider this time as a vacation. We cannot say: “Ah, well, I was on vacation and I didn’t know it!” Indeed, vacation time, whether it lasts a few days, a few weeks or a few months, must be a time that we savor in advance, a time that we hope for for a certain time.
We must have the opportunity to live this happy time many times in thought before living it in reality. We must be able to contemplate this time before us, count the days that separate us from it, build projects…
You can’t just suddenly go on vacation one morning, just like that, after receiving a call from your boss: “Jean-Paul, starting today, you’re on vacation for two weeks,” or worse: “Jean-Paul, stay home today, it will be one of your vacation days. But I’ll expect you tomorrow at the usual time.” Because, another important condition for feeling like you’re on vacation, you need to have a certain number of consecutive vacation days.
To go about
And then, the word vacation is close to the word “vaquer”. Vaquer is to occupy oneself with something. When one does nothing, one does not go about. One goes about one’s business, but one cannot go about doing nothing. And this is another important question for determining the conditions of a real vacation.
If his holiday plan is to do nothing at all, can we say that it will really be a holiday? Holidays must absolutely include a change of scenery, otherwise they cannot claim to be a holiday. But, some will say, a change of scenery does not always involve travel. It is not necessary to leave the house to leave. Excuse me? Do I understand correctly? How do you want to leave if you do not leave the house?
But yes, you can leave while staying in one place. The important thing is to free the mind, the body does not necessarily have to move. Well, let’s admit it. But how to free the mind? There are many ways. Reading is one of the easiest ways and within everyone’s reach. But it can also be done by moving one’s interests.
Passion
To give one’s full interest for a certain period of time to something that one neglected or tried to forget during one’s working weeks, one of one’s passions for example. Yes, one of one’s passions…
Choose from the pile the one that tickles you most insistently and give it free rein for days, without trying to judge whether it is futile or not, “worthy” of you or not… Let yourself be guided by it, knowing that it is only temporary and that, when the holidays are over, you will put it back in the closet.
This is a great holiday activity, to release a passion that has been trapped in your mind for the rest of the year. To live a passion, to let it express itself for a few days, a week if necessary. Like on Halloween, to put on a costume, to transform yourself into someone else, for a very limited time.
This would constitute another essential characteristic of a real vacation: to provide rest, to allow one to rebuild oneself. To free a passion by allowing it to be lived fully and intensely for a short period of time, this can lighten the head of the one who carries it for fifty weeks without being able to put it down somewhere.
This project could then respond to this vacant requirement: vacations must be awaited, hoped for, we must sigh after them. We will bear much more easily a passion that laments in its inner prison, if we have planned to let it go for two weeks during the summer.