Mar 28th, 2026 Saturday Cloudy
The period before a vacation tends to be the most hectic, for most of us who are just a little bit too conscientious.
Not only do we try to wrap up every project that we are involved in at work, we also hope to prepare our home for an absence of its masters. We wish to foresee all the uncertainties and get a solution ready whether it will be needed or not.
Fortunately, it will all come to an end. The moment we step out of the house, and embark on a journey to an unfamiliar place, we are setting ourselves free, even if just for a few days.
I start to realize this freedom might be one of the reasons among many that traveling has such appeals for me.
As adults facing numerous responsibilities, people eventually feel settled by establishing a set of routines that repeat daily/weekly. In the morning, we wake up at a specific time, dress up, eat breakfast (my husband literally has exactly the same thing every day), then commute to the office. After the workday is over, we take care of house chores, cook and eat dinner, employ ourselves for a couple of hours’ leisure, then go to bed. Weekends are spent on gathering with friends/family, as well as more work around the house/yard.
Entering a groove provides a sense of stability and security, whereas the lack of it could be stressful.
Nevertheless, we often forget, that there is NO RULE against breaking these self-mandated tracks occasionally. We come up with a single way to solve the problem of meeting all our needs and obligations, but we overlook the possibility of trying different ways – perhaps it seems too troublesome to search for another one since we already have one that works? Perhaps we are just too unmotivated to think more than what is absolutely necessary?
In a sense, traveling forces us to reset, to adjust, and to break out of the autopilot mode. Schedules are shifted. Lunch boxes are not readily available in the refrigerator. Evenings cannot be occupied with simply puzzles/reading/crafting (normally we do not pack these). It suddenly feels like everything needs to be re-figured out.
So our brains get waken up. We open our eyes to reflect on the choices around us, and we execute our autonomy by making “novel” decisions, and we become full human again.
While the fear of change can be daunting, if the change is the natural result of traveling, we KNOW that we can always go back to our usual place, so the risk of exploring something new is low. And if we end up liking the freshness of some new activity that we have tried on a trip, we can always incorporate it into our system.
We are allowed to be a child – to experiment and witness the outcome soon after, and learn from new experiences. It is a luxury that we are not granted any more, yet we can certainly use more of it. Therefore, we have to carve out spaces for ourselves, like arranging a getaway every now and then.
And that is refreshing, isn’t it?