Taking a holiday is one of these things that seem like an unnecessary, and costly, indulgence. Why spend money when you can earn it? Why play when you can work? All the arguments I know of against holidays focus on the financial aspects of the undertaking. As far as I've heard, there aren't any arguments against holidays that say that they are bad for your health, or mental well-being, or that they don't add invaluably to your life's experience.

I know when I'm due for a holiday when I wake up and have no exciting ideas for the classes that I am going to teach that day. When today feels no different to yesterday. When this week was exactly the same as last week. When next week is not full of anticipated events, but will be the same unextraordinary routine. When I enter a classroom and think "Oh, God!"

My sanity is dependant on taking holidays. They refresh me in a way that nothing else can. Perhaps it's the absence of a routine that does it. Or the unpredictability of the day's events. Or the fact that I don't have to do anything I don't feel like doing. Or because I am doing things that I don't normally do. When on holiday I feel like a different person, someone who is an adventurous, risk-taking, take-things-as-they-come, kind of person - a person I feel I normally am not.

And the experiences I've had while travelling on holiday have shaped, and continue to shape the person I am. Some have been learning experiences, like changing money on the street in Zambia and being apprehended by the police who only wanted a bribe in exchange for my release. Or dangerous experiences, again in Zambia, where I thought a police roadblock was road works and while making a "detour" was stopped by a plain clothes policeman and a soldier, who stuck the barrel of his machine gun through my window. Or breath-taking experiences, like the train ride through the Swiss Alps and standing on the edge of the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Or tiring experiences like the 2-hour ferry crossing from Wales to Ireland that became an 11-hour trip in gale force winds. Or unusual experiences, like sleeping in a prison cell in Sweden (the prison had been converted into a hostel - I was a legal inmate!)

My upcoming trip to Thailand will doubtlessly restore my well-being and add another category of experience to my life.

4 October 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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