Do you take the same vacation every year? If you answered yes, we did too, and probably for all of the same reasons we did: we loved going there. We also knew our way around, and knew exactly what to expect. We knew we would have a great time, and it was our happy place.
One beautiful spring day, I was sitting outside a coffee shop, enjoying my latte and working on a blog post. At the table next to me were two girls talking about the summer vacations they were planning. One was like me, planning her same favorite beach vacay, and the other said something I will never forget, and the title of this post, “why are you taking the same vacation every year?”
She went on to explain that she intentionally plans a different trip every year, and that there is a whole world to see. She asked her friend if she thought about exposing herself and her family to different places. She talked about how much fun it is to explore new places and to plan for each trip. She said how meaningful and enriching it was for her children to actually visit the places they had read about in their history books. She had fallen in love with adventure and trying new things. She then shared trip experience after trip experience, at which point she had me convinced.
I went home that day and announced to my family that we should start planning a trip somewhere new and different. I thought I would be met with resistance, but to my surprise they were excited. Since then we haven’t repeated a trip since except for one, where we visited our old faithful beach locale for nostalgia’s sake.
I’m not saying to never visit any place twice. And I also realize to some who already love to travel to new places, that all of this may sound obvious. But where I live, I assure you so many families travel to the same place every year, and I wonder if they will look back and feel they missed out. Will you? In a lifetime that is so fleeting, we want to live in a way that we have no regrets, and that we can feel we have lived it to the fullest.
If you take the same vacation every year, consider branching out and trying somewhere different. Ask yourself what you love about that place, and why it is so important you to go there specifically. For us it was partly for financial reasons. Where we loved going was affordable! But I have been pleasantly surprised to discover places all over the map that we now love just as much that are just as affordable and in some cases they even cost less.
My intention for writing this is not to convince anyone that going on the same vacation is wrong. I hope to go to our old favorite again soon, and wish we had the financial means to do both each year: to go somewhere new and to to our beloved beach town. My hope is that someone who has never considered going somewhere new would have their eyes opened to the possibility that they might love another place as much as their old standby.
After reading this, if you feel as convinced and compelled to go somewhere new as I did that day at the coffee shop, I would love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments where you decide to go.
Essentially Better Living 