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Broke Wife, Big City
Who
deserves a vacation?
By Aprill Brandon
Of all the titles I thought I’d have throughout my life, Illicit
Vacationer was never one of them. And yet, here I am, with my Instagram
feed defiantly full of photos of me and my family cavorting on a beach
in Maine.
In my defense, I didn’t read Michelle Singletary’s piece in the
Washington Post titled “If you’re in debt, you don’t deserve a summer
vacation” until after I got back. So, you can imagine my surprise that
I somehow managed to get away with sneaking off to the shore without my
student loans grabbing me by the ear and hauling me back home while
lecturing to me about financial irresponsibility.
If you haven’t read the article, it’s all right there in the headline.
But it’s the “deserve” that got me the most. Interesting word choice,
considering that the vast majority of Americans are in debt. Luckily,
she clarifies what she means by “debt” with the definitely not
condescending sentence “I’m sorry to tell you that you don’t deserve a
summer vacation if you’re a hot financial mess.”
Ah. Thanks, Michelle. Hot financial mess. Got it. So...everyone then?
But perhaps my favorite bit was when she goes on to say you don’t
deserve a vacation even if you saved up for it. Because we should all
be using that money to pay down our debt. Because, honestly, how long
is going to take you to become completely debt-free? What, 30, 40,
years? You can vacation in your 80’s.
In HER defense, though, she does graciously offer a solution to us mere
commoners, us plebs who frivolously spent our stagnant wages on
unaffordable higher education, child care, housing, working vehicles
and medical procedures. That solution being, of course, the luxurious
and also definitely not condescending concept of the “staycation.”
Because everyone knows how relaxing it is to hang out in your filthy
house that you hang out in every other day of your life. But, as she so
kindly reminds us, don’t spend your valuable time off cleaning and
attacking that mile-long to-do list. You’re on vacation, afterall. Act
like it. Just step around the piles of laundry and dog vomit.
But enough of Michelle’s Very Helpful Tips for the Working Poor. Let me
tell you who I think “deserves” a vacation.
Everyone.
Everyone deserves a vacation. Full stop. Everyone is stressed out.
Everyone is busy to the point of exhaustion. Everyone is struggling, in
some way or another.
I’m sure even rich people get stressed out from time to time. I don’t
know, maybe their third Porsche didn’t start today and now they have to
have their butler take it to the mechanic and it’s become like a whole
thing. I get it, man. It’s rough.
Which is why we all deserve a break. Do you know what’s so amazing
about vacations? It is somewhere away. Away from home. Away from your
problems. Away from the world’s problems. Just for a bit. Just long
enough to breathe and take in a lungful of life.
Because by being away, you get perspective. Say, perspective about how
you were not put on this Earth merely to work hard and pay your bills.
And you don’t need a big fancy vacation for this perspective. All
travel changes you for the better. We only went an hour and half away.
In the off-season. For only five days. Because that’s what we could
afford. Most of the time it was 55 degrees and rainy.
But it was heaven. Because it was away. Because it was the four of us,
laughing and exploring and eating absolutely nothing of nutritional
value and remembering that in the grand scheme of things, all the rest
of it is just the small stuff. Life is big and should be treated as
such.
Because do you know who deserves a vacation the most, in my opinion? My
children. They deserve to run around on beach when they’re young enough
to scream in delight and slight terror every time a wave touches their
foot. They deserve carefree days full of sandy kisses and sticky hugs
that leave their lollipops hopelessly tangled in their mother’s hair.
They deserve the pure joy that can only come from hopping in the car
and setting off for destinations unknown with happy parents.
Debt will always be there. Even if I finally do pay off all my current
debt, my car is 14-years-old. We’ll need a new one soon. And at some
point, someone will break a leg, or get really sick, or need surgery.
Eventually, we’d like to own a house instead of renting. Someday my
kids will likely go to college. There will always be more debt.
But you know what there won’t always be more of? Time. This time, right
now. Where my kids are young and my husband and I are less young but
still young enough to chase them through the streets of a charming
seaside town with delight.
I can guarantee you, Michelle, that when all of us are on our
deathbeds, we won’t be thinking “man, I’m so happy I got all that debt
paid off, what a life well-lived.” We’ll be thinking instead about how
we sat and watched the waves on a freezing beach that one day in May.
And then we came back to our little oceanfront cottage and made s’mores
by the fire, with a peace settling upon us that was interrupted only by
spontaneous hugs that left fragments of sticky marshmallow hopelessly
tangled in my hair.
So, take that vacation, my friends.
You can’t afford not to.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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