Planning That Next Getaway? Chances Are You’re Not Getting Away.
Your elaborate vacations don’t make you any better of a person than before.
They don’t give you a break: you keep dodging the root of your issues.
If you don’t like yourself, a vacation isn’t going to fix anything.
Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away. — Socrates
Traveling with an unkept mind, you travel to get away from yourself.
Not liking something fundamental to yourself or your daily routine will continuously poke a thorn in your side no matter how you try and escape it.
Don’t like your job? A vacation isn’t going to make you suddenly like it. In fact, resentment may fester when you go back.
Don’t like something about your personality? A trip to Bali isn’t gonna fix that. Drugs and/or alcohol isn’t gonna fix that.
A sentiment remains:
don’t rely on external things to fix internal problems.
Men seek retreats for themselves — in the country, by the sea, in the hills — and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life.
— Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Book IV
If you are untroubled, at every end of the Earth you will find a hospitable abode.
Who you are matters more than where you go.
The world can be your home, and any vacation can bring lots of joy.
But only if you are first content with yourself.
Marcus Aurelius advocated in this quote to renounce vacations.
I love my vacations as much as anyone else, but the reason of why we take vacations should change.
Vacations should never be about trying to escape something else. They should never? try to solve our internal problems or help us become a better person.
Vacations are an avenue of enjoyment, so focus on enjoying that scenery or venue.
Self-improvement is a journey done in whatever living situation you have, whatever job you have, whatever friends/family you have.
The place to practice goodness and living up to your potential is wherever you are constantly living.
You have to look internally to try and solve those problems.
Just you and a book. Or you and a journal. Only you can figure out how to work on your current shortcomings. Nobody else can help you in the same capacity.
Vacations give a nice break, a change of scenery, and the ability to refresh.
And once you get back, you’re excited for all the work you get to do.
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