Vacation, Don’t tell me your not afraid?
It’s really funny.. how much emotions swing during out of the ordinary times like vacation time... you can be loving each other one hour and the next being totally annoyed.. you can one hour feel like your family member thinks you’re really wonderful and the next hour be wondering, “Do they really even love me?”
Vacation is risky.. why? because you face so many moments of challenge, moments that require you to invest more energy than just floating along your merry way of your “normal” life. As much as we all dream of vacation time, the people who actually move beyond the discomfort of where to go & what to do, then have the anxiety of wondering, “What if we don’t like it?”, “What if it’s not as much fun as we thought?”, “What if we’re bored?”, “What are we going to do while we’re there for a whole week?”, “Can we leave early if we don’t like it?”...
Don’t tell me it’s not challenging or scary, I don’t believe you! It is, and there are fantasy expectations and then there is reality when you actually arrive and there are adjustments to make to reality. It takes patience to work with each other, to work together for everyone’s needs and personal quirks, there’s uncomfortable moments.. so many moments of ecstasy and a short time later times of offense and times you’re sitting there thinking, “Maybe we should all just get home as quick as possible and forget this whole idea!”
It is normal! Stick it out! Vacation is Teamwork. “Family” means loving each other enough to work though issues. Sometimes “family” means sitting there when things are really aweful and seeing it through until the “aweful” breaks and the “wonderful” shows up again. “Family” takes every one’s needs and desires & comes up with the best solutions. Vacation teaches us how to work together, sometimes how to put down what we want for the good of the whole.
Yes, it seems strange as much as we all long for vacation that we would think of going on vacation and face some fears. I know I felt like I must have a total loser family and I wouldn’t want to breathe a word that we all were honestly wondering if we would want to be together, face to face for that long, wondering if it could turn into a nightmare instead of a dream? In the end, it was a RIOT! We laughed, we loved, we learned about each other and shared some time that we couldn’t have been better spent any other way.