Car-free holidays
Last week I wrote about the reduction in stress experienced by people who are giving up Facebook for a few weeks. The stress induced by social media and all kinds of technology is tremendous. According to Virgin, six out of ten people feel stressed by technology. The range of symptoms reaches from sleep deprivation and lower quality of sleep to anxiety and depression.
This experience has triggered an entire cottage industry of digital detox providers and a National Day of Unplugging held every year on 1 March. These are all good ideas and they really help reduce stress, but they can also be used to reduce stress in general.
Years ago, my wife and I introduced “gadget-free Sundays”. Because we were both very stressed at our jobs (not just from the use of technology but due to other factors as well), so we decided that every Sunday we would shut down our smartphones and abstain from using the internet, TV, email, phones or any other form of electronic media. Before we started the experiment, I was concerned I would be bored all day (I do get bored easily…) and that a gadget-free Sunday would turn out to be a rather stressful day. I could not have been more wrong. The Sundays without TV and the internet turned out to be like mini holidays. The house was quiet and we could both relax, talk to each other and when the weather was nice, just enjoy nature. It turned out to be the best recipe to charge our batteries in a short amount of time and I still recommend gadget-free Sundays to everyone who has had a stressful week.
We have since expanded the concept to our vacations. We found that one of the best ways to have a relaxing vacation is to go to a car-free island or village. The mere absence of cars slows down the pace of life so much that it creates an incredibly relaxing effect on the people who live there and the tourists who visit. The list of car-free or practically car-free places in the world is quite long, by the way. We have been to places like La Digue in the Seychelles and Zermatt in Switzerland, but I hear Lamu Island in Kenya and Hydra in Greece are also very nice. Over time, we have upped the ante and try to rent places in a car-free surrounding (or at least an area with very few cars) that comes with a dog, but the secret of how to do that will not be revealed. So, as you plan your summer vacations, you might consider going to a car-free place.