When I was a kid, living on the east coast, my family would go on vacation every summer to a certain beach in South Carolina. My parents, my younger sister, my chain-smoking grandmother, and I would all cram into our Oldsmobile (the one with no air conditioning and safety windows that only rolled down half way in the back seat) to make the 8 hour trek to the ocean. It was an event that would have made Chevy Chase tear up with jealousy because my father was the only man on the planet who could complicate things more than Clark Griswald.
The idea was that a vacation consisted of moving from point A to point B. It didn't matter if we fought the whole way there or were forced to participate in activities that bordered on the absurd. It would be 110 degrees with suffocating humidity and we would have to hold a vigil on the beach every day from 9-5 simply because we were on vacation. Sunburns, jellyfish stings, sand chafing unspeakable areas? Suck it up and enjoy yourself because it was vacation time!
I look back now and realize that my parents were doing everything in their power to provide some great memories for me. I can't fault them for being generous and trying to have a little fun with their family. However, I think their idea of what a vacation should be was a little off. For them, as long as we went somewhere other than our sleepy little town in West Virginia, we were on vacation. For other people vacations are synonymous with 'doing nothing.' Any substantial break in the rigors of a busy life constitutes a vacation because the person is now afforded an opportunity to rest. These are both fair points and wonderful elements of a vacation. But, ultimately, I think they miss the point.
The root of the word vacation is vacate. There is an element of leaving somewhere to go somewhere else, but it is not just a physical separation. How many times have we packed up, moved timezones, checked into a great hotel, and then spent an obscene amount of time dwelling on the circumstances we left at our home address? We have physically vacated the premises, but mentally we are still tethered to the office or our social clubs or anything else.
I bring all this up (ah ha... there is a point) because I was talking to a friend a few days ago and he asked what our residents did during the day. I told him some of them stayed in and some of them went out. He sarcastically replied that it must be nice to live like "you were on vacation all the time." You see, he was confusing inactivity with vacationing. I told him it he was right...
It must be nice for our residents to sit around all day and remember a time when they weren't homeless and had gainful employment. How wonderful for them to go to our communal dining area, pour some instant coffee and then kick back and reflect upon the mounting bills that resulted in their current situation. It was impossible for our residents to vacate anything because everything was a reminder that their situation was not going anywhere.
...and I wonder why people aren't lining up around the corner to be my friend!
1 comment:
Obviously, that fellow doesn't have the first inkling of what homelessness really is, does he?
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