I have no trips planned this August and no particular urge to organise a holiday. I will probably go somewhere later on, because I love travelling, being somewhere different and discovering new places. Right now, though, I am perfectly happy to be here.
Perhaps that is partly because the place I am moving to has a communal swimming pool, which means I will be able to spend a few hours outdoors without having to go very far. As I have been organising the move, I have realised that the pool represents, on a small scale, something far more important to me: I like the idea of building a life in which the things that make me feel good are not confined to a few weeks of the year.
August has a particular way of revealing our relationship with holidays. For months, we look forward to taking time off, counting the days until we can finally slow down, sleep more, spend time outdoors, read, see friends, travel or simply have time to ourselves. Then September arrives and we return to everyday life, often with the sense that what we have just experienced belonged to a temporary interlude that inevitably had to end.
Wanting a holiday, looking forward to travelling, resting or discovering somewhere new is entirely natural. When we are away, our pace changes, our habits change, we spend our days differently and, quite often, the way we feel changes too. That difference can tell us something about the life we are returning to. What is it that we so desperately need a break from?
A significant part of my work is concerned with the relationship between identity and the life we actually live. We can change profoundly over the years and still, through habit, fear, responsibility or adaptation, continue to organise our days around a job, a relationship, an environment or a way of living that no longer reflects who we are. Sometimes we only realise this when we temporarily step outside our usual lives and discover just how different we feel away from them.
A holiday can then become something more than a period of rest. For a few days, we interrupt our usual routines, use our time differently, spend time in different places and perhaps rediscover aspects of ourselves that have very little room to exist during the rest of the year. Returning becomes difficult because, when the holiday ends, that particular version of our life ends with it.
Most of our lives are lived on ordinary days: in the home where we wake up, in the work we do, with the people we spend our time with, in the way we spend our evenings and in the time we manage to preserve for the things that matter to us. Building a life that is coherent with our identity means allowing who we are and what we have chosen to be reflected in those ordinary realities. It does not mean eliminating effort, responsibility or difficult periods. It means being able to recognise the life we return to as our own when the exceptions are over.
Perhaps that is also why I am happy to spend this August surrounded by boxes, choosing furniture and putting a new home together. I am building another part of my everyday life, and I want it to resemble, as closely as possible, the life I actually want to live — even on an ordinary Tuesday in November.
I will continue to travel, go away, take time off and want to discover new places.
What matters to me is building a life that feels good to leave, and just as good to come home to.