How to Overcome Fun Guilt

The Transformative Power of Travel

One of my summer beach reads when I was in college was Wanderlust by Danielle Steele. I had not heard that term before. The idea that there was some force that pulled you to travel and explore was fascinating to me, it was resonant. My mom loved to travel, as did her brothers, who were always off on a new global adventure bringing back tales of delicious foods and exotic gifts. It seems that it must run in the family.

In high school, at the age of sixteen, I had my first opportunity to travel out of the US to Spain as a summer exchange student. Living with another family was awkward for me, but I gained a confidence as I explored Madrid alone and navigated communicating in a foreign language. I fell in love with the culture and the people.

My next opportunity to travel was four years later when I chose to spend a semester abroad studying the formation of the European Union. It enabled me to travel across Europe and it was like living a dream. I did not know life could be so fun. We had classes four days a week, so we always had a long weekend. The train station in Freiburg, Germany where I was studying was an easy walk from our dorm, and served as a portal to endless options to experience different cultures and have new adventures. Cities and villages across France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, England, Netherlands, Italy became new playgrounds with new friends. Hanging out in different pubs, trying different foods, meeting students from all over the world in youth hostels, navigating different languages. It was heaven to me.

After graduating, travel became limited to what I could afford and fit into a week’s vacation. Later, when I worked as a consultant I traveled a lot. I did enjoy being in the variety of locations instead of sitting behind the same desk every day, but over time it came to feel like a burden. With small children at home there was a guilt with travel, missing family time.

Planning vacations was a favorite family past-time. It started when our daughter Hilary decided we needed to visit Disney World. She sat at our iMac and created a presentation to make her case. She even found flights and hotels. Her tenacity and creativity made me so proud, so of course we went. We had some wonderful trips as a family… sky diving in Hawaii, volunteering in Costa Rica, para-sailing in Mexico, sightseeing in London, exploring the California Coast, horseback riding and hot air ballooning in Colorado, Disney in Florida, beach combing in South Carolina and Martha’s Vineyard, Broadway shows in New York, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, skiing in Vermont, snowmobiling in Quebec, helicopter rides in Sedona. We just loved to travel and have adventures together. I could write an entire book on all of the funny experiences and encounters we had.

The memories are priceless. Every cent we spent on those trips was worth it. As hard as it felt to step away from work at the time, I have no memory of any work event that carried the same sense of fun and adventure as one of our family vacations.

After Hilary passed away it took years to feel up to a vacation again. She had always been my travel planning partner. It felt lonely to do that without her. Then my yoga teacher offered a retreat in Crete. Greece was a place that had always intrigued me so we went. It felt bittersweet to be traveling with my husband without our children. I had not traveled to Europe since Hilary and I went to Germany for cancer treatments, so the shadow of that memory hung over me as I boarded our international flight. Once there, exploring the ancient sites heightened my awareness of how fleeting each moment is across the span of history. These ancient places, some of them still in the process of being excavated and rediscovered, with walls where people once lived and art that adorned their walls. It made me consider what artifacts future humans might find of ours in a thousand years, undoubtedly plastic ones.

This trip reminded me how powerful travel can be. I felt rejuvenated by the authentic cultural experiences, foods, art and people. This all soaks in to you at some level so when you return home you are different. My wanderlust was reignited not just for the act of travel, but for the transformative power it had on me. On that trip I felt like I had begun to rediscover myself. I saw that I could experience joy. I felt like I was honoring Hilary’s memory and spirit by allowing myself to appreciate the incredible gifts of the world.

I reflected on this when I began to plan a bucket list trip to the Basque region this fall. Initially I was excited. There is an ancestral connection there for me, my paternal grandmother’s grandfather was born in Bilbao. Crazy fact, Basque people have the highest concentration of O negative blood in the world, at 25-30%. That is my blood-type. Across the rest of Europe, where the rest of my ancestors originated, it is 6-8%. It is no wonder why I am drawn to explore that area, it is literally in my blood.

And, I have one of those milestone birthdays coming up, so what better excuse to live it up with an amazing trip! Opportunities kept coming up to really take the trip to another level. I was already flying to Europe, why not join a dear friend on a bike trip to France? With my two week trip sketched out, I began to dive into details. Then a colleague told me about a sustainability conference in Rome that just so happened to begin two days after we planned on flying home. I submitted an abstract, it was accepted, and I was able to change our flights at no extra cost. Things could not have aligned more perfectly.

Guilt began to set in. Excessive was the word that kept coming to mind. Who am I to spend three weeks in three different European countries? It didn’t matter that this was a dream scenario for me, I felt like I was doing something wrong. What seemed like an educational and developmental opportunity when I was in high school and college feels indulgent now. Why?

Doing a little research I discovered that fun guilt is a real thing. Some psychology researchers have actually developed a Leisure Guilt Proneness Scale. The reasons take all shapes and forms including worries about not being productive, spending money, fear that you may be replaceable at work, enjoying things that others do not have the resources or ability to do…. and similar flavors of negative self-talk. No surprise, women are more prone to Leisure Guilt than men due to household responsibilities.

The thing is, I could not think of a single reason not to extend my trip. If I take each of the potential concerns one by one they don’t inhibit me. Layered together they still do not create a real barrier. In fact, I know it could be good for my health, my creativity and for the networking opportunities at the conference. I am well aware that life is fleeting and precious and that we all need more joy in our lives. And, I have no doubt it will be wonderful and fun.

So what is my hangup? Why won’t that little voice in my head shut-up? I can picture those frugal neural pathways in my brain. The ones that run really really deep and guide me to defer and deny enjoyment. They have been steering me along the same patterns of thought and behavior for too many decades to just let me skate a new pathway without any friction.

Fortunately, I have fun loving people in my life to encourage me to overcome those old habits. What is the point of taking a sabbatical but to explore new perspectives to spark inspiration? So I have done the mental work to override those negative voices and have almost turned them off. The last of the flights and most of the hotels have been booked, and I am ready to rediscover adventure again. Hilary would surely approve.

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