Posted on January 06, 2025
Last fall, my husband and I traveled to Japan, a place he had wanted to visit for decades. Sharing a cruise with our son and daughter-in-law made the trip extra special. I wanted to be able to savor every minute of it.
Looking back, I can point to three practices that helped me succeed in doing that:
1. Checking baggage (the other kind) at the airport. Prior to our trip, I’d been dwelling more often than I liked on some painful past experiences. Like most people, I carry around emotional baggage, my own personal collection of unresolved emotional issues. I’d been trying to notice my unhappy thoughts and let them go, but I knew they would rear their heads again until I resolved them. In the meantime, I didn’t want that head-rearing to ruin my vacation.
This wouldn’t be easy, I knew. Mind-wandering – ruminating about the past and worrying about the future – is normal. In fact, a famous study by two Harvard psychologists concluded that we spend nearly half our time thinking about something other than what we are currently doing. I wanted a strategy to help me keep my mind in the present.
I decided that along with my physical baggage, I would check my emotional baggage at the airport. Trying to get rid of it altogether would have been futile. I would simply suspend it. When we retrieved our suitcases after our flight home, I would imagine my emotional baggage being there, ready to be reclaimed. This plan, I hoped, would allow me to more fully appreciate each moment of my trip.
It did. Not only did it help me focus on the present, but it also allowed me to experience how good it felt to be without my emotional baggage. Back home, I was more motivated than ever to lighten my emotional load by unpacking and handling whatever was there that wasn’t serving me well.
2. Going SCUBA diving (mentally). Being on the ocean, first the Pacific then the Sea of Japan, evoked memories of my brief but unforgettable time as a SCUBA diver. What I remember most about diving was what is sometimes called the “blue mind” effect, a feeling of tranquility, even euphoria, that divers experience when they descend below the surface of the ocean, where all the noise and commotion of daily life disappear.
In this state of mind, divers can observe in detail the spectacular beauty of the underwater world. They see fish of different colors, shapes and sizes. They see corals and plants swaying with the current. Relationship struggles and to-do lists disappear in this environment. Focusing only on the breath and the surrounding scenery, the diver experiences present moment awareness at its best.
While I had no intention of entering the water during my late October trip, I planned to use the sight of it each morning as a reminder to be fully present for the special experiences we would have that day. This cue helped me immerse myself in the exquisite beauty of the temples and shrines we visited and in the pain of the atomic bomb museum exhibits in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Making my way through the steep, narrow passages of a dark, wet cave, I could focus on each step without worrying about what lay ahead.
3. Appreciating (and offering) acts of kindness. The Japanese people we encountered were almost shockingly polite. We were amazed by their kindness and eagerness to help. Out of consideration for others, they even take their trash home to dispose of it, leaving their streets and sidewalks perfectly clean. Seeing these behaviors, we couldn’t help but ask ourselves, “Shouldn’t we Americans do this, too?”
We should. We all know how good it feels to have something nice done for us. Not as obviously, so-called “random acts of kindness” – even little things like giving a compliment or letting someone cut in front of us in traffic – have been shown to benefit not only the recipient but also the giver. Improved mood, reduced stress, lowered blood pressure, decreased loneliness and increased longevity are health benefits of being kind. Being inspired by the kindness shown to us, I became more inclined to behave this way myself.
These three practices – parking emotional baggage; recalling an awe-inspiring place of peace and quiet; being grateful for acts of kindness and extending them to others – all served to immeasurably enhance my vacation experience. I now hope to bring them forward in my day-to-day life to enhance it, too.