Imagine a vacation. What does this look like for you? 

Historically, vacations were marketed as escapes from the mundane. They were sources of excitement and exhilaration that left retro-painted billboards peeling across the US Interstate system for half a century. They were family road trips without strict destinations, the glittering city lights of the Las Vegas strip, and party cruises. These bits of Boomer Americana party culture are slowly fading, leaving behind Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, Coachella for the modern upper-middle-class single, married without kids millennial, and a lot of married with kids Gen-Xers. These kinds of high pleasure intense experience vacations are like nothing else.

Some may be shaking their heads at this point. This is not appealing at all. You’re thinking a vacation is a return to simple needs, unplugging electronics, not checking email, and a whole lot of quiet. This sounds like the complete opposite of the first example, doesn’t it?

Pleasure is not Relaxation. People will go on a “vacation” and say they are seeking both, when they are often contradictory to each other.

Think about that rush. Pleasure starts when you get a feedback circuit that motivates you to keep going. It says, “this is the best feeling ever; let’s get more.” But Pleasure never gets enough. When people go on a vacation to feed pleasure, they are looking for those hits of dopamine and the surges of adrenaline that feed them. This same feeling drives people to achieve more, do more, and experience more. The ability to do these things is finite.

Relaxation is a return to center. It’s a calm that makes everything feel real again. It strips away the glittering dopamine factory lights and prizes and gives you the soft waves upon a sandy shore with cool water filtering between toes. It’s a quiet cabin in the woods where we fall into the most basic of daily rhythms to rebuild a healthy routine. A return to the center from which we can then grow again.

In our everyday lives, we are bombarded with Pleasure. It comes in the form of messages on our phone to the ads slithered into our TikTok feed. It comes in the form of promotions at work, beauty, money, or social clout. 

Each and every time we feel a reward, this drives us further into a feedback loop that will eventually hit burnout. That Pleasure is the exhaust of you treating yourself like rocket fuel. Burning a little to go out and have fun is one thing, but using your whole tank because you never stopped to refill is another.

Relaxation is how you refill the tank. It’s how you prevent burnout. And it’s how you balance your need for Pleasure.

Featured Image by Airstream Inc. on Unsplash