Is Travel Playtime for Adults?

Adventure is a State of Mind

How Often Do You Make Time for Play?

When was the last time you did something just for the fun of it? Not because it was productive. Not because it would benefit you or your family monetarily. Not because it was expected of you. Just because you wanted to do it and because it was fun.

Fun? It’s a little worrisome how many adults have forgotten how to have fun. Or maybe they still know how, but with work and family demands, they just don’t have enough time to have fun.

And then there’s screen time – research suggests that increasingly, most of us turn to the passive entertainment of our phones and tablets. Mindlessly scrolling through social media because we’re too tired to do anything else becomes a substitute for fun and play.

We Need Play to Be Healthy

Humans seem to be hard-wired for play. Young children certainly figure out how to play, even if they aren’t taught how to do it. Actually, there’s probably a biological drive for it because most animals play, including all mammals and even some reptiles!

Play is healthy for us. Laughter, which is almost always present when we’re having fun, has health benefits – people who laugh more often have been found to have lower risks for cardiovascular disease, reduced inflammation, and increased pain tolerance. Laughter has also been found to increase the brain’s production of brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), which stimulates nerve growth and possibly makes us less prone to dementia.

Play is also an opportunity for us to be creative and get to know ourselves. The psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, said that in playing we are able to be creative and use our whole personality. As children we use play to figure out who we are, and as adults we use play to get back in touch with who we are.

What Counts as Fun and Play?

Catherine Price, the author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, refers to “True Fun” as “the feeling of being fully present and engaged, free from self-criticism and judgment. It is the thrill of losing ourselves in what we’re doing and not caring about the outcome. It is laughter. It is playful rebellion. It is euphoric connection. It is the bliss that comes from letting go. When we are truly having fun, we are not lonely. We are not anxious or stressed. We are not consumed by self-doubt or existential malaise… True Fun makes us feel alive.”

By comparison, she says that “Fake Fun,” such as scrolling through social media, leaves us feeling numb and empty and less energized. It decreases our connections with others and diminishes our feelings of joy.

Price identifies the key elements of True Fun as playfulness, connection, and flow. It’s about doing an activity just for the sake of doing it without caring much about the outcome. And it almost always involves having a special, shared experience with someone. And laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.

Think back on when you’ve experienced this kind of fun, laughter, and connection. My guess is that many of those times involved a trip or vacation of some sort. Maybe it was a short weekend get-away with some of your best friends, or maybe it was a longer travel adventure with your family. Regardless, if you found yourselves laughing hysterically about something that you can’t explain to anyone else other than to say, “I guess you had to be there,” chances are you were experiencing Price’s True Fun.

Travel as Playtime

Price provides a list of characteristics she thinks are signs of True Fun, and hence (in my mind, at least) play. These include:

• Laughter
• A sense of release/freedom/letting go
• Feeling like you’re having a special, shared experience
• Losing track of time
• Feeling free from self-judgment and self-consciousness
• Feeling like you’ve temporarily “stepped out” of normal life
• Being fully absorbed and present
• Not caring too much about the outcome
• A feeling of childlike excitement and joy
• A positive boost in energy
• Feeling totally yourself

Hmmm, many of these sound a lot like what I’ve experienced while traveling. In fact, many of these are reasons why so many of us are drawn to travel.

Obviously, if you are traveling, you’ve stepped out of your “normal” life, and there’s often a sense of freedom from self-judgment and self-consciousness. (Like the saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”) And having a special, shared experience with my travel companions is one of the biggest benefits there is to travel. But there are so many more of these characteristics that are intrinsic to travel. Here are just a few:

Despite the physical demands of travel, I often feel like I have much more energy than I do at home when going through my daily work-life routine.

Visiting new places focuses my attention so that I’m absorbed in the moment and can lose track of time. (Many of us have had the experience of being stunned by how quickly the days and weeks can pass while we’re traveling.)

I find that I’m more willing to try new things when I travel. And traveling has helped me to become less judgmental of myself and others, and even to be able to laugh at myself.

Have I convinced you yet? Although travel is not the only activity that promotes fun and play for adults, it certainly seems to create the perfect conditions for fun and play to occur.

We do not quit playing because we grow old. We grow old because we quit playing.

George Bernard Shaw

Go Have Fun

Sometimes having fun is easier said than done. It’s almost impossible to force yourself to have fun, but you can set up conditions that encourage it and fill both your travel days and your day-to-day life with more fun.

First, though, I want to acknowledge that it is difficult to make the time and space to play if your basic needs are not met. We all need to feel safe, have food and clothing, and a roof over our heads in order to be mentally available to have fun. But for those of us who are privileged enough to have the resources to travel, it is very likely that our basic needs have been met.

So what are the conditions that create opportunities for play and fun? Price suggests the following:

Be engaged and present. In short, get your nose out of your phone! Our lives are what we pay attention to. You have to be aware and engaged to enjoy what you are doing.

Yes, there are times that you do need your device (GPS anyone?), but there are more times than not when we can leave our phones in our pockets. Spend the majority of your travel adventure with your eyes up taking in the scenery. Make eye contact with your travel companions when something funny is happening.

My husband, Greg, and I were once riding with a French friend in a van in the Alps. As we were traveling at break-neck speeds around twisty roads, the friend often turned to look at us while talking. At the time, Greg’s and my frequent glances to each other were telegraphing that we were terrified… but we were also on the verge of nervous laughter. Since that time, the shared experience brings us tears of laughter as we recount the story (and our survival) to our friends.

Avoid self-judgment or self-consciousness. One of the joys in exploring a new area is that you usually don’t know anyone there. This is a great opportunity to let go of self-judgment and just enjoy being yourself and trying new things, even if you aren’t good at them.

As I’ve talked about before, the only way to learn a new language is to be willing to try your best knowing that you will make mistakes… lots of mistakes! In my college French classes, I hindered my learning by being afraid to speak because of the anticipated judgment of my instructors and fellow students, whether or not they actually were judging me. As I’ve gotten older and have traveled to France multiple times, I’ve gotten less self-conscious about trying to communicate. This has actually resulted in a lot of laughter and fun interactions, and my facility with the language has improved significantly.

Go all in. I suppose if you’re being forced to go on a trip, you might not want to be there. I’m not exactly sure how or when this would happen other than maybe the occasional teenager who doesn’t want to leave their friends back home.

If you’ve already invested time and energy in the adventure, why not lean into it? Stop comparing things to what they’d be like back home and just experience what’s in front of you. Be willing to try new foods, new activities, and shake up your normal routine.

Don’t care too much about the outcome. This may be one of the most difficult fun conditions to create when traveling. Unfortunately, many of us put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have the perfect travel adventure. Social media, such as Instagram, has probably made this even worse as we compare our experiences, with all of their frustrations and imperfections, to the gorgeous, curated photos of those who have traveled to the same areas before us.

Letting go of the outcome and trying to enjoy a trip, regardless of whether it turns out the way you had hoped it would, can enhance your experience – especially if you’re on the lookout for fun experiences rather than the perfect photo opportunity for your social media feed.

Be with other people. It’s a bit cliché, but people need people. Even introverts need social interaction and connection. Although there’s nothing wrong with being a solo traveler, if you are, it’s important that you still find ways to connect with the people you meet on your travels.

Traveling with others creates moments of connection and shared laughter. Often the experience of traveling with someone can strengthen the relationship because of the shared connection. And traveling with others certainly results in the continued enjoyment of sharing and reliving memories with each other after you return home.

Playfulness, Connection, and Flow

Focusing on these qualities improves your odds of experiencing the key elements of True Fun – playfulness, connection, and flow. Playfulness and connection are fairly self-explanatory, but some of you might not be familiar with the term “flow.”

Flow is a psychological term used to describe when you are fully engaged in an activity or experience to the point that you lose track of the passage of time. The phrase was coined by the psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (please don’t ask me to pronounce his name!), and is also known as being “in the zone.” Flow is a positive mental state that contributes to general well-being.

Flow happens when we are engaged in activities that we enjoy, that we have skills in, but that also provide some but not too much of a challenge. Flow often occurs spontaneously during our travels, but we also can build flow-promoting activities into our adventures. For example, do you enjoy physical challenges? Consider adding hiking, rock climbing, or bicycling to the itinerary. Do you enjoy more artistic pursuits? Maybe you can schedule a painting or pottery workshop for one of the days of your trip.

Play as Grownups

As we discussed earlier, it’s hard for many of us to find time to play, or even to remember how to play, as grownups. As adults, we have so many responsibilities and things we need to get done. Even if we know it’s healthy for us, it’s hard to make time to have fun.

Most of us (probably all of you reading a travel-related blog), however, make time for vacations, and those can be a perfect opportunity to build some play and fun into our lives!

Travel adventures, in and of themselves, include many of the elements of fun, but with just a few tweaks to our plans, we can experience even more fun by setting up the conditions that create playfulness, connection, and flow.

Is travel your playtime? What can you plan into your next travel adventure to increase the amount of fun you experience? Share your ideas in the comments section below so we can all have more fun!