Vacation mode
One of the joys of parenthood is seeing your kids in their purest state. What you see is what you get for the first few years: children are who they are, unsullied by social norms or weird parental tics or any of the other stuff that warps personalities over time. For parents seeking a semblance of control it can be infuriating, for sure, but it’s hard not to be a little envious of their freedom.
And as I continue the journey toward finding that authentic state—the one I’ve buried under decades of compromise and settling and thinking the possible simply isn’t—it’s got me wondering: do we ever kinda get near it by default? Or, to put it another way, are there circumstances in which our internal settings naturally emerge?
I think the closest is when we’re on vacation. All of a sudden, we don’t care about work. We ignore emails. Text messages go unanswered. The daily slog melts away, money troubles are ignored, bedtimes blown through, an adventurous spirit emerges, and passion is often reignited. But it’s all a trick, of course, resulting from the change in location and the knowledge you have a hall pass for a set period before normal programming resumes.
On one level, vacation mode is fantastic and there’s nothing wrong with always having the next holiday to look forward to. But it’s also dangerous, especially if you begin obsessing over finding the person you loved on vacation once you’re back in the real world. Does that person exist? Sure. But only within vacation mode. It can take a long time—often years—to accept that personality you crave only appears 1% of the time.
The problem here is vacations are treating the symptom, not the cause. Hard as it can be to accept, I’m realizing the cure for someone who wishes their partner was more like the person they see in vacation mode is to … find someone who’s naturally like the person you love in vacation mode. And if you’re self aware enough to recognize you’re a different person when you’re on vacation, then investigate why. Because while life will no doubt intrude now and then, I’ve decided we all deserve to feel like we’re on vacation way more than 1% of the time.