Portugal 2003
I spent the last couple of weeks on vacation, first in the Algarve region of Portugal and then in Florence. Despite an annoyance or two, that I'll describe later, I had a great time. I got to play golf on four great courses, ate great food, albeit too much food, and got to talk to some wonderful people. The service was great and the strangers added to our threesome were pleasant people. While I didn't feel all that old when I looked around me at the hotels I visited, I was certainly a lot older than most of the people I saw on the golf courses. As I looked around, I envied their strength and flexibility but I didn't envy the stress they were apparently experiencing.
The essential element of a vacation ought to be reduction of stress. Leaving accustomed places, normal responsibilities, the pressures of every day life for beautiful, restful places where people are having fun ought to reduce if not eliminate stress. Yet many of the young people I saw appeared as full of stress as the people I see in workplaces. I've seen this phenomenon before: Young people with everything, especially their youth, are laboring under tension that hurts them, that they can't escape, even on vacation. They seem unable to relax, unable to enjoy their youth.
I believe the culprit is competitiveness. Many people, especially young people, want to turn every situation into a contest. Whether it's making dinner choices, selecting itineraries, dancing or playing a friendly round of golf, they find it more important to beat the person next to them in an imaginary tournament than to enjoy the activity for itself. If everything is a contest, the stress never stops for them. They have to be alert, focused, hard-charging at all times, even on what others call a vacation. A certain level of stress is apparently good for us, keeping minds and bodies working well. But stress beyond the required level is destructive. And, since stress is cumulative, failure to relieve stress will eventually make it impossible for them to enjoy anything, to deal with other people, to function at all.
The solution is simple to state but sometimes difficult to apply: Relax. Enjoy situations for what they are. Don't regard everything as a contest, don't create imaginary and pointless tournaments in your head. Participate in activities for the sake of the activity, not to beat the person you're with, your fellow participant.
As usual, golf offers a model. In golf the skill or success of the rest of your foursome bears no relation to your game, to your enjoyment of a round. Whether the person next to you is a bad player or a good player doesn't affect your own game, your own enjoyment. In golf, we try to hit every shot as well as we can and move on to the next shot. We can do the same thing in other activities. We can do the best we can and enjoy it no matter what others do. We can be happy with our own activity even if we don't "win" the game.
The next time they're on vacation I hope these young people will consciously try to reduce or eliminate stress, at least until they're back home. And then they can do the same thing at home.
9-29-03
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