The summer of staying close to home

ATLANTA
A few years ago, the specter of space tourism captivated the world. That seems now, to say the least, a different planet.

This summer, leisure will be redefined across the globe from dreams of exploring the cosmos to the prospect of muddy knees from an afternoon in the garden.

Adventures like a walk through the Alps, a Spanish pilgrimage, or an evening at the softball park will replace cruises and Caribbean vacations for people riding out the recession in places like Tokyo, Frankfurt, Paris, London, and Atlanta.

Sure, Qatar is betting that tourists will buck the downturn and still flock to its bejeweled hotels. But in many parts of the world, this summer marks a season of lowered vacation expectations and forced time off (also called unemployment). Yet it is also bringing the hope of the curative balm of doing a lot of nothing, and even the return, especially for work-obsessed Americans, to the kind of leisure that Thoreau said can improve the “soul’s estate.”

Indeed, the slowdown in cubicles is forcing many people to reevaluate their hyperdrive lifestyles, a development that may even challenge government policies around the work-life dynamic, inspiring the first mandatory vacation bill to hit the US Congress since 1936. Moreover, scaled-back vacations could help curb, in the US and abroad, a longtime trend away from the great outdoors – and potentially force a new search for meaning in a downsized life.

“There’s a convergence we’re seeing right now with the economic downturn and a long-simmering desire to simplify our lives,” says Colleen Carol Campbell, a St. Louis-based writer who no longer checks e-mail on vacation. “People are being forced to turn more to simple pleasures and focus on family where there’s simply less ability to divert yourself with exotic vacations and brand-new gadgets.”

Others concur. “From what I’m seeing, this does seem to be a time when people are open to rethinking things,” says John de Graaf, a coauthor of “Affluenza: the All-Consuming Epidemic.”

Unfortunately for many workers, free time doesn’t pay all that well. Around the world, time spent at work has declined, but so have paychecks. Life satisfaction levels in countries ranging from Turkey to the US have plummeted as workers face layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts, says Simon Chapple, an economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In fact, with jobs so closely entwined with identity in some societies, the prospect of unbidden time off is hardly seen as an opportunity. “Leisure is terra incognita [for many modern workers], so we’re highly reluctant to embrace the possibility of free time,” says Ben Hunnicutt, a professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “We want to save our jobs, and I predict we will. We’ll get back to work, and we’ll forget the possibility of leisure.”
Maybe in America, but not in many other parts of the world, where time off is still sacrosanct. Consider this emphatic statement from Diane Elkabach, a young secretary rushing home to her two children after a day’s work in Paris. “Anglo-Saxons put too much importance on earning money,” she says. “I don’t live for my job. I live for me and my family.”

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