Enough About The Importance Of A Guys (or Gals) Trip
“Gym, tan, laundry” was the line used by DJ Pauly D from the hit MTV show Jersey Shore. It’s meant to describe a list of priorities for the day leading up to raging on the shore at night.
Ah, back when the day was that simple.
I don’t know if it was ever that simple, but there was certainly a time when life had fewer responsibilities.
Don’t get me wrong, life is significantly more fulfilling with these greater responsibilities, i.e., career, family, health, and being a contributing member of a forward-leaning society.
Take for instance…
from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, submitted by Kristi.
However, it’s my personal belief that one must take a brief intermission from the theater of life to stretch one’s legs and emphasize the self to maintain balance throughout the beautiful chaos that life can throw one’s way.
For example…
“Date nights” are imperative in my marriage. From time to time, responsibilities pile up, and there seems to be less time for my wife and I to connect. It’s not as easy to do today as when we were two young lovers traveling the world foot-loose and fancy-free.
When communication dwindles and little things seem bigger than they should, we get back on the same page over dinner and a glass of wine or on a hiking trail. It doesn’t take much, but this refocus helps us return to best friend status, and our quality of life improves. A little check-in is all that it takes.
For the same reason one needs to nurture relationships with others, one should never neglect to nurture the relationship with oneself.
Enter The Guys (or Gals) Trip
For the sake of this post, I can only write from the perspective of a guy. I’ve been one for the last 41 years and plan to be so for the foreseeable future.
When I first started in my career 19 years ago, an old friend and mentor told me about The Freedom Cup.
The Freedom Cup is a destination golf tournament at which a group of fraternity brothers began to keep in touch with each other after they had graduated college. It is a can't-miss event that these guys put on the calendar every year.
What began as an excuse to get together, golf, drink, and act like a 21-year-old Sigma Chis morphed into something much more significant. Life happened.
The annual dinner, where shit-talking and golf team drafting took place, became an opportunity to celebrate accomplishments, mourn losses, and support causes.
I thought this was so cool and something that I hoped could be in my life once there was more to it than gym, tan, laundry.
Fast forward, and for the past 6 years, I have done an annual guys trip ski weekend with my best friends from high school.
These guys are now scattered across the country with responsibilities of their own. However, we make it a priority to get this trip in the books and reconnect.
Guys Ski Weekend (we need to get a better name for this adventure) is a quick getaway, usually booked with points, to a place that none of us have been to before.
The famous Corbet’s Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We definitely did not hit this run.
We are not tremendous skiers or snowboarders, but we like to talk about the gear and terrain as if we were. One of us typically makes some cool “schwag” in the form of a custom sweatshirt with significance to our destination. This year, I may be providing some custom Enough About It shirts (don’t spoil my surprise).
This trip is an opportunity to take that intermission and return to our 18-year-old selves for a brief moment.
Conversations throughout the trip typically evolve from the beginning to the end of the trip in an organic way. There’s a genuine interest in each other’s families and careers, but the “catch-up” conversations feel like a formality.
We shake off the rust and return to our true selves as our guards are let down.
Dad, husband, doctor, teacher, manager, investor, and developer wash away with each lap down the hill.
Like a wound-up retriever, after a long run, we finally release the pent-up energy, can chill out, and quit chewing on the furniture of life.
The superficial conversations turn real. The laughter becomes deeper and more therapeutic.
As my wife says “This is real life”, and real life tends to happen. Relationships become more complex, and work-family balance becomes a greater struggle. We lose people we love and mortality sets in. Milestones and goals are achieved or missed. As the beers get thrown back in a hot tub, nursing sore legs, it becomes easier to share these events (that we all go through) with our companions.
Scott Yavis, from Alive.com summarizes this experience eloquently in his article titled This Is Why Guy Time Is So Important, where he states: To stretch our legs and our minds as we talk about the good stuff, the stuff we only talk to other guys about. Sometimes it’s the tough stuff: anxieties and fears that are robbing us of sleep. And sharing this with friends brings validity and depth to the individual lives we’re all leading. We laugh—deep belly laughs—until we’re too sore to continue, and we get real in a way that we haven’t since the last time we adventured together.
I encourage you to check out the link below and read Scott’s article as he hits the nail on the head.
I can attest from personal experience to the therapeutic benefit of guy time. As brief and infrequent as it may be, guy time has always been a “self-centering” tool that helps me be my best in other aspects of my life.
It can be a camping trip, a church mission, or a stint at Space Camp. Regardless of how you get it, you need to feed your soul.
If you are fortunate to have fostered friendships in your life, remember to keep them relevant and well-fed.
Our positive relationships, be they with family or friends, are gateways to the past, reassure our present, and help us navigate our future.
Put some guy (or gal) time on the calendar. Reconnect with your crew and yourself. The rest of your life will thank you for it.
https://www.alive.com/lifestyle/this-is-why-guy-time-is-actually-so-important/
