I have just returned from a five-day Disney extravaganza, which included a cruise and two days spent in the parks. Last night as I was looking out of the window of the flight home, I started to feel that classic post-vacation emotion of  “Ugh, real life and work set back in tomorrow.” Then I began to wonder, why do we all get so depressed at the end of a trip?

That low feeling of reality setting back in makes no sense when you consider that most vacations aren’t perfect. There were definitely moments in them when you were stressed, so it isn’t like you’re coming home from some problem-free utopia where everything was rainbows and people with tropical leaf fans feeding you grapes. My theory is, if people would stop hyping vacations so much, they might enjoy them more.  

A perfect example that proves my point is how people act if things don’t go according to plan on vacation. Every vacation I’ve ever been on, there’s always some type of hiccup: it rains on your beach day, or you run late and miss a reservation. Without fail, every time something like this occurs the reactions are of epic proportions because it’s a vacation, and how dare anything go wrong on vacation? A vacation is still real life, so it’s never going to be perfect. I believe people’s expectations are far too high, and if they would look at vacations as real life being lived in a different location for a while, and not removal from real life, things would go a lot smoother.

In this age of needing to document our lives on social media, people are more focused on showing others they had a great time at the beach rather than just having a great time at the beach. For instance, a girl that traveled with us brought two swimsuits to the Bahamas; one she actually wanted to swim in, and one to take pictures in for Instagram. This girl had never been to the beach before and spent an hour of the limited beach time we had trying to get the perfect swimsuit picture. Everyone was irritated with her because she wasn’t spending time with her friends, and we had to wait for her to finish to do other things on the island.

I was irritated as well, but then I thought about how we all do that in some way or another. I know I’ve Snapchatted pictures of a quiet, awkward dinner where no one was speaking captioned with “Great night out!” In the time it took to angle, take and post that photo, I could have started a conversation and attempted to actually make it a great night out. In future vacations, try to practice putting down your phone and accepting that things aren’t always going to be perfect because it’s in the moments you aren’t worried about the vacation being memorable that you make the best memories.