Recently I consulted a doctor, a naturopath (my favourite line of medicine) and he remarked how am the most healthy and happy on a vacation, and suggested that I take a vacation every month to which my sister-in-law remarked why not make life a vacation and that got me thinking! Its not something I have not heard before, my father has told me that since when the travel bug made it to my veins, he always said why look forward to travel, make your daily life itself like a vacation, this came my way about 22 years ago but then it was reiterated very recently and very strongly at that. Now armed with physical (literally) proof I began my quest on how to make life a vacation, well knowing that vacation is what happens once in a while and is novel is what makes it unique, yet breaking it down to a basic structure here is what I have surmised, makes life a vacation!
- Walk a lot. On vacations I hit about 20000 steps a day gladly, looking up at beautiful sights. If the vacation is with my husband that number is a lot lot more!
- Breathe in fresh unpolluted air, since most vacations are in places with better AQI than Bangalore!
- Eat as much as I wish, since the measurement devices used to measure food while cooking at home are not available, every meal and every day is different, sometimes its lesser than normal and sometimes its more. Ah yes, when in a much more developed country like Switzerland, read expensive, the need to grazing on food becomes unneccessary and food is only looked for the nutrition it provides and sometimes my appetite vanishes too! So staying hungry becomes wildly possible. LOL and fasting is great for the body they say!
- Dress well, smile a lot. Since we are forever taking pictures to record the fancy memories we are dressing to the hilt and smiling a lot more than we do on a normal day at home!
- Living out of a suitcase, so basically with everything else safely locked at home, our circle of belongings are limited to whats in the suitcase and they say a woman’s happinesses in inversely proportional to the amount of things she owns (or hordes)!
- The point of novelty, vacation always means seeing something new or doing something different, every day is novel and this novelty is exhilarating. I love the fact that each day is new, there is nothing routine about a vacation. First of all the time zone is different, jolting one’s body and apart from that even when the time zone is the same, it is a different day!
- Seeing the different ways of living and accepting that there are all kinds of people in the world, not being biased on one’s type of food or dressing or even thinking, frees one from any point of judging and thats brilliant.
- Finally to know that home’s waiting, and so is dal and rice! Especially when we travel to countries where we dont easily find dal and rice, I miss that the most, and after one week thats all I need to provide myself the jolt of energy to continue on. Yet there is always joy in coming back home. While sad that the vacation is over, there is always the happiness of being home. I have not always loved travelling, in fact until I went to architecture school I found travelling a chore. Only in order to see architecture of all sorts I would make all the effort to go, perhaps if I werent an architect I’d only go to the beach, and thats because I love swimming in the ocean and if I lived by a swimmable beach and weren’t an architect I’d probably never travel at all! And then in corollary wouldnt need the vacation in the first place 😉
Vedasri Siddamsetty 