The unbearable lightness of revenge holidays

When the vaccines finally made Covid retreat, our reaction was united: we started traveling furiously. Holiday resorts have been stormed, stations and airports have found themselves having to manage crowds of holiday exodus every day. Experts have called this phenomenon “revenge holidays“, revenge tourism.

For revenge against the pandemic who had forced us into the house for months that for many seemed endless. It was last summer and tour operators quickly recovered some of the losses accumulated in the previous two years. The surprising fact is that the phenomenon does not seem to have ended. Although prices have shot up and the very concept of low cost has entered a crisis, the tourism boom continues. We leave as soon as we can, we are driven by a frenzy to live every moment to the fullest as if everything were to end at any moment, as if we were afraid of having to lock ourselves up in the house again for who knows how long. But it is no longer revenge, if it ever was, to guide our actions; I would rather say one restlessness. On the day when we say goodbye to a great novelist who has left us, Milan Kundera, we could say that it is a search for lightness to mask the heaviness of being, the lack of prospects. As in those verses that are studied in high school and that never leave us, we all seem intent on toasting and singing “he who wants to be happy, there is no certainty tomorrow”. Mind you: It’s great to travel, but don’t run away. Whoever manages to restore meaning to our tomorrow, to show us a mission to accomplish or a reason to fight for, will restore our passion for the future.