By Seth Barnes Iconoclast Blast
I SPENT TWO HOURS LAST NIGHT fumbling through the attic for a red duffle bag. I spent the last two months hoarding travel-sized containers of toothpaste and deodorant, stuffing them into my toiletry kit like a deranged gold prospector (thanks again to The Courtyard at Marriot). I spent some quality time with my fiancée arguing about the merits of spray-on suntan lotion versus traditional lather. I say spray is the way to play. Most importantly, I’ve spent every waking minute in the last week ticking off a to-do list that would make the folks at NASA blush. The plants are watered, the dog’s been dropped off, and I cleaned everything out of the refrigerator that could potentially mutate into an alien life form.
I’m ready for my vacation. It’s time for blast off.
This, of course, is the way Americans do it. We take less vacation time than the rest of the industrialized world, and the days we do take are crammed between life’s ever-recurring stressful events. We often hear that there’s a better way. The European elites claim they enjoy the finer things in life with upwards of six weeks of vacation and a government-mandated 35-hour work week. Oh, to spend the month of August sunning on the banks of the Mediterranean knowing that even when you return, your boss can’t, by law, make you stay late to finish that Powerpoint presentation.
Is Powerpoint even legal in France? I feel like meetings might be a free-wheeling enterprise conducted by passing around baguettes and carafes of wine as everyone merrily sorts out the issues at hand. Forget the action bullets and business-speak. It sounds très magnifique to me.
Of course, Western Europe suffers from increasing unemployment and a seething underclass bitter and disenfranchised at the lack of economic opportunity available to them. Entrepreneurial vision is virtually non-existent. Don’t hold your breath on seeing the next Google or Starbucks coming out of Marseille.
But there’s got to be a balancing point between these extremes. There’s no doubt that the character and culture of America gets scrubbed out as more of us live in planned exurban communities at the edge of interstates where we drive to a homogenized office park to make money allowing us to do more shopping and eating in big box stores and franchised family restaurants. Blah. That sounds depressing. And I haven’t even gotten to the economic disparity that plagues our nation where millions live in poverty while an expanding upper-class moves further up the ladder of prosperity. Oh well, I’ll let John Edwards handle that one.
The point is that the extreme version of capitalism fairs as poorly as a socialized society that subsidizes away any incentive toward striving and creativity.
I’m not going to bring my handheld device on this trip. In fact, I’ll be going totally wireless, totally off the grid. I have no doubt that this will cause anxiety and even extreme frustration for a few days. But I think a full-body cleanse washing away all electronic tethering will do me well.
To my mind, the ideal would be a world where one doesn’t have to look forward to an extended respite. More balance and mindfulness would tamp down on the ups and downs of modern life. If one’s life pursuit in “work” can somehow match an overall passion that one has in “life” perhaps everything would be honky-dory. But nothing great is achieved without sacrifice I suppose. So I’m not going to delete the Powerpoint application from my laptop.
I have a feeling I’ll need it when I return.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 2, 2007. Read the original PDF.