Are you happy on the vacations?

The question is: does the dream come true? Do people enjoy actual time spent on their favourite picnic spot?

I always wondered when I saw tourists with the usual paraphernalia going with great excitement from one point to another. The same crowd, the same gossips, the same gobbling between rushing. What is the difference from their daily routine?
Now there is a research available to support my doubt.

Researchers from the Netherlands set out to measure the effect that vacations have on overall happiness and how long it lasts. They studied happiness levels among 1,530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom took a vacation during the 32-week study period. The study, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, showed that the largest boost in happiness comes from the simple act of planning a vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks. Not only that, there was no post-vacation happiness either. The exhaustion and subtle  disappointment shadowed their much-hyped trips.

Osho makes fun of this attitude of looking for fun elsewhere, not where you are right now. The bottom line is, if you cannot be happy now/here, you cannot be happy anywhere.

Just see how Osho ridicules the idea: “There are people who are working their whole lives just waiting for their retirement; then they will relax and enjoy. And they know perfectly well: six days they work in the office and wait for the seventh day, the holiday. And they cannot relax and they cannot enjoy. In fact, the holiday seems to be so long and so boring; they have to fill it with something.
“They go for a picnic. The same things that they would have eaten at home, in a relaxed way, now they rush towards a picnic spot miles away to eat.
“And cars are going there bumper to bumper. And many more accidents happen on Sunday than on any other day, many more deaths on the road than on any other day. Strange! Some holiday!

“And the whole city is going towards the same picnic spot, the same beach! I have seen pictures of beaches and I cannot believe what is happening. There is not even space to walk! They are packed. And the whole way they were quarrelling with the wife and the wife is quarrelling with... This you can do at home more at ease, relaxed in an armchair –– nag each other, do whatsoever you want! What is the point of going to the beach?”