It’s About Time

You have spent the last year saving and planning on your long-awaited family vacation.  You can picture it in your head, your spouse lovingly telling you what a great job you did planning the vacation, and your kids appreciatively telling you that this is the Best Vacation Ever!  You cannot wait and the days and hours crawl by.  In just a few short days you and your family will be heading to the happiest place on earth… Disney.

Except, and I’m just guessing here, it’s probably not going to go quite like you planned.  It’s the kids of course.  They just can’t seem to follow the plan.  Why is my two-year-old daughter, who loves Cinderella, screaming bloody murder every time the princess comes around?  Why does my 8-year-old son all of a sudden hate Buzz Lightyear?  It feels like it was just yesterday that he couldn’t get enough of Buzz.  I suppose it’s also the spouses.  Whadaya mean you’d rather be at the pool at the hotel???

The comedian, John Crist had a whole sketch about the happiest place on earth.  It was him mimicking parental behaviors that were decidedly not happy.  Like most sketches, it’s funny because it hits uncomfortably close to home.  The truth is that the Disney vacation, or really any idealized vacation, isn’t going to live up to our expectations because we are focused on the wrong things.  We focus (or maybe stress out is the better term) on the events, the money, the rides, the food, and the prizes.  It isn’t really about any of that though.

I learned this one year after we took an expensive vacation to Disney ourselves.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time.  My wife really hit it out of the park with her planning.  I also think our kids had a decent time as well.  We certainly made some memories.  However, about a month after we came back from Disney, we went on an inexpensive weekend getaway to Lake Michigan.  Some friends had a house right on the lake and generously let us stay for the weekend.  While there, I was at the lake with my 12-year-old son.  I was launching him into the lake and he would swim back to me to repeat.  He at one point swam up to me, threw his arms around my neck, and exclaimed in no uncertain terms, “This is the best vacation ever!”  Really?  THIS vacation?  That’s right, this free, weekend getaway where we swam, played board games, and grilled out was now officially the best vacation ever.  I understood then that it was never about the place or the money or any of the other things I thought were important.  It was always about the time.

So my call to action is simple.  Make time for those that you love.  Throw the ball with the kids, or play a video game with them.  Make dinner with your spouse or just go for a walk.  Just spend some time doing the thing that they enjoy.  It doesn’t have to be a vacation to be the BEST TIME EVER!

Jeremy Echerd
A Man IN Action