I’m going on a vacation!
I haven’t been on a vacation for about 14 years or so, and I’m
a little nervous about it.
See, there was a time that things were different. My mom and
I used to enjoy vacations. Roaring River State Park and Caplinger Mills in the
Ozarks, Mark Twain’s home and Saint Louis, travelling around in Missouri.
I used to have a lot of interest in travelling. My first
girlfriend and I went to Houston Texas to see the Johnson Space Center, which
was one of my dreams. It was my first vacation by airplane, and it had its own
terrors, but it was worth it.
About a decade later, things were all different. Marriage,
children, and various other factors had changed my life around as well as my
interests and personality. In time, all I wanted was to stay at home, generally
in my bedroom. We still travelled some, but in time my wife and kids went on
vacation, while I had my vacation at home.
I lost the ability to sleep in hotels, to relax while
travelling, and the notion of vacations left a bad taste in my mouth. Going
places and seeing the world took a backseat to surviving day after week, month
after year.
After 2008 and my divorce, I began trying to simplify my
life. Over the years I started rediscovering myself, which included figuring
out what I was interested in again. I have trouble sleeping anywhere other than
my own bed. I started walking at a park in town which was mostly pleasurable
due to being outdoors and around nature.
My young lady in recent years has talked of wanting to
really travel. She’s been to Boston, to California, to Florida, but really it’s
almost always been for reasons other than simply vacationing. She has been in a
holding pattern for years, waiting until the time and finances were right to
see the sights beyond a thirty-minute drive from home.
Finances were never going to be accommodating, so she
decided it was just time to go. She asked me, the now-timid homebody, about
going on a real week-long vacation down to the Ozarks.
As scared as I was of leaving the familiar (again, this was
a development in my world, not really the actual me), I said yes. I haven’t had
a second thought about it.
Now I’m packing for the trip.
I may not sleep much, but I promise I’m going to relax.
There’s another dimension to the matter of going on vacation
however. A very Mindful dimension.
It took many years of deterioration to relieve me of my
inner interest in things. My inner self went into hiding like an abused puppy.
So now I’m facing those coping mechanisms and all the
conditioning that robbed me of myself.
Mindfulness encourages me to allow my true inner self to
come out of hiding. I have fears, and that’s okay, I don’t have to feel ashamed
of them, or like I have to deny or “fix” them. I am free to feel the fear, but
I’m also free to choose what I want to do about it.
My path is now one of healing. So I’m going to go watch fireworks
over the Ozark lakes even if it gets loud. I’m going to have a vacation that
isn’t planned out completely, something else I developed a problem with over
the years.
I can mindfully allow the vacation to unspool however it
will without worrying that it isn’t living up to her expectations or mine. I’m
free to just live in each moment of the vacation come what may. Every wave on a
lake that laps against the shore will be a wave I’ve never seen before and will
never see again.
Whatever else we do might not pan out the way we expect it
to, or the way we want it to. But I’m going to enjoy them, because I’ll be
experiencing the world a moment at a time with the woman I love.
By leaving my expectations at home I’ll be able to leave my
worry about everything at home as well.
What? A vacation that involves getting away from the drama
and anxieties of recent life? Where I can just go and enjoy whatever happens,
not worrying over who I’m with or what might happen?
A vacation I can enjoy again?
Yes please!