I’ve always been a vacation kind of gal.  You know those people who at the end of the year still have unused vacation days?  That has NEVER been me!  One of my favorite things about the beginning of a new year is being able to plan out my time off.  This is, however, not something I recommend bringing up in a job interview! A conversation I had recently with a friend reminded me of my first experience of vacationing with small children.  I remember the usual excitement of planning the trip, the thought of getting away from the normal routine, and the anticipation of relaxing with a good book by the pool, with the occasional nap thrown in for good measure.  Those of you who are parents can stop laughing now.  What I discovered is that the word “vacation” is a misnomer for those traveling with little ones:  it is really just life in a new location.  And with the disruption in routine, it can actually be more stressful than just staying at home!   Vacation to me has always been synonymous with “escape”.  That is why the book “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert has been so wildly successful:  it chronicles one woman’s year long escape from reality by taking a series of amazingly adventuresome vacations around the world.  Even women I know who are happy in their career and home life harbor a secret desire to be able to leave it all behind, if just for a little while.   I loved the book and yes, would love to experience what Elizabeth did.  A few years back I would have given, well, perhaps my first born child for that chance!  But from where I sit today, the desire to escape is thankfully not paramount in my thinking.  Freedom is really what I desire and freedom, I have learned, has both external and internal components.  In our country we are free to do, say or go where we want, within reason.  And yet there is still a desire held by many to escape.  What they are focusing on is the external constraints of their life and wishing to be rid of their bondage.   Real freedom, however, comes not from external release but from an internal sense of serenity.  It’s the knowing that regardless of everything happening on the outside, inside all is well.  It is a state of being that people expend a great deal of time, energy and resources trying to achieve and yet it really takes none of those.  It is learning to escape not from your physical reality but from the expectations and machinations of your overactive mind.  It is not escape from the bondage of a job, a relationship, a routine or an environment which brings freedom:  it is the escape from the bondage of self.   I’m still looking forward to next year’s vacation and I relish any breaks from my routine which give me a chance to relax and breathe.  But gone is that urgency and desperate feeling of NEEDING to get away.  Now if I feel antsy or overwhelmed, I know I have a choice to continue to live in the meddlesome mind that created the anxiety or to take a mental vacation and pick a different scene on which to focus.  Escaping the self-imposed limitations of my mind proves to be a satisfying, enjoyable and more economically advantageous trip- and I don’t even have to ask for the day off!