Making Lemonade Out of Today’s Economic Struggles
By John de Graaf
There’s no doubt about it. Like every other industry in America, travel and tourism is hurting. In Washington State, where I live, travel earnings are expected to fall by nearly half this year. Hotels have slashed prices, and a round trip airfare to San Francisco, which cost me $228 at this time last year, is $139 this year. I still suspect there will be open seats. Meanwhile, taxpayers, irate about such things as the AIG bonuses and CEO resort holidays paid for by bailout funds, now seem unable to understand even the necessity of totally legitimate and necessary business travel.
In a time when so many people feel lucky to have a job, more vacation time is a tough sell. And yet, there may be a silver lining hiding behind all these dark clouds. An economic crisis like this one offers a rare opportunity to ask some bigger questions about our direction as a society. Here’s a simple one: What’s the economy for, anyway?
For a long time, we’ve answered that one almost by default. The American dream has been to make money, and as much of it as possible. To that end, we work longer and harder than people in other rich countries (damaging our health in the bargain) and we take greater risks with the expectation of giant rewards. For a long time, many of these risks paid off handsomely. Investments in the stock market produced bumper returns. But things are different now, and many of us have suffered immense losses—either our money or our jobs, or both.
The economy will recover: maybe this year, maybe next. But the question remains: do we want to go right back where we were, working longer and longer to catch the gold ring that, this time, suddenly disappeared in a haystack of derivatives and credit default swaps? Or is it time to rethink our goals and begin to trade some of our amazing productivity for time instead of cash?
Most importantly, making such a trade and rethinking the American Dream will improve our health, now surprisingly poor in comparison to other rich nations. And it will, potentially, reduce our enormous health care budget, now 17% of GDP and rising, double that of our competitors. I spoke recently with Dr. Sarah Speck, a heart specialist and director of the Center for Cardiovascular Wellness at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. She believes vacations are more essential now than ever.
“People are being asked to do more at work, learn new technologies and respond to them more immediately,” says Dr. Speck. “So there’s no down time, there’s no rejuvenation time, there’s no relaxation time. They have less time to spend with their families and they have less balance in their lives.” All of this, says Dr. Speck, has led to an epidemic of stress that she witnesses day after day. “In cardiology, what we know now is that stress is as important a risk factor for developing heart attacks and stroke as having uncontrolled blood pressure or being medically obese. We see people who are not making good choices because they don’t have time and they have lost the ability to care for themselves. They’re not sleeping as well and that adds to an increase in depression and other stress-related disorders.”
Vacations offer respite from these stressful situations and better sleep patterns. An Air New Zealand study found that people got an extra hour of quality sleep each night after taking a two week vacation. (One should note that minimizing the Blackberry and cell phone use while on vacation will help distance you from the stresses of daily life and ensure that you are making the most of a rejuvenating vacation.)
The American people implicitly understand the value of longer vacations in achieving healthier, happier and more productive lives. TAKE BACK YOUR TIME recently commissioned a scientific poll of 500 Washington State voters concerning vacation time. Perhaps not surprisingly, the poll showed that 87% of Washington voters believe vacations help prevent health and burnout, 57% believe they increase worker productivity and 55% believe they will lead to lower health care costs.
Yet ironically, Americans leave more vacation days on the table year after year than any other industrialized country.
We need to begin to reevaluate how we, as Americans, view the concept of vacationing. We need to see the intrinsic benefit of investing in our health by taking time away from the daily stresses and making time for relaxation and rejuvenation so that we will be more emotionally and mentally prepared to handle whatever life throws at us. We need to realize that the monetary value of a vacation gives you a better and longer return on your investment than a one-week trip. Until Americans can begin to change their perception of vacationing as a luxury to one as a necessity, will we truly turn this crisis into an opportunity.
About John de Graaf
