"Recharging Your Batteries" [Part 2]

What is the healthiest way to approach a vacation?

Anyone setting out on a vacation should firmly resolve to put day-to-day responsibilities not only out of sight but out of mind. The most beneficial vacations are real breaks from everyday life. It is also important to approach a vacation with an open mind. This means being willing to accept what the vacation has to offer, come what may, and being ready to savor the new and the different. It means being able to relax despite the minor inconveniences of travel that invariably arise.

Some people want constant stimulation during their vacations. They must see everything on their itinerary and end their evenings in a disco. Others prefer to sightsee for a couple of hours a day and then take advantage of free time to unwind. "Real relaxation lies in the enjoyment of experience," says one specialist in the use of leisure. If family or friends are along, this expert urges, it is important to spend some time alone every day. This need to be no more than 20 minutes, but too much togetherness can bring its own irritations.

No one has written more felicitously about getting away from it all than the American author John Steinbeck in his book Travels With Charley. "A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."