I’ve taken some amazing vacations. Seriously—scenic, memorable, cool stuff. Travel has always been a top financial priority for me. It felt like one of the few things in life that reliably gave me joy and perspective.

And in many ways, I still believe in the value of taking time away. But over the past year, my perspective on why I take vacations—and what I’m actually hoping to gain—has changed in some big ways.

This past year has been one of the most transformative of my life. I’ll spare you all the details, but I went through a season that forced me to re-evaluate the way I was living—not just my schedule, but my perspective on the nitty-gritty of life. One of the biggest realizations I had along the way was this: There aren’t enough vacations in the world to make up for a life you’re reluctant to come back to.

This is a truth that didn’t come in a moment of revelation but as a gradual realization. And if I’m honest, a year ago I would have seen these sentiments as hopelessly naive.

On trips, certain patterns emerged. The “Sunday scaries” were starting to creep in on Friday. I’d be on vacation, supposedly relaxing, and already planning the next one. I even caught myself trying to plan out retirement one time while on a beach—far from basking in the present moment.

What I realized is that I was often using vacations to escape “the grind.” And the more I paid attention, the more I realized how common that mindset is—especially in medicine. We see burnout as a given. Weekends are seen as a much-needed “diastole” to recover from the anxiety of everyday experience. Yet while I lived in this mindset, there would never be enough weekends or vacation.

Acceptance is a word that gets thrown around a lot with a sense of fatalism. But my acceptance helped me realize I had to change the lens I used to view my life.

I’ve always valued efficiency. I’d move through visits, sticking to the urology-related tasks at hand. Now I try to embrace the beautiful human moments that can show up in a clinic, a hospital room, or a consultation room. Sometimes that means talking about grief, or fear, or something that’s not going to make it into the chart, something that doesn’t have a CPT code. But I’ve come to believe that presence is part of the medicine (for both the doctor and the patient), even if metrics measure it poorly—if at all.

Another shift: I’ve started reframing the daily annoyances. You know the ones—charting burdens, scheduling delays, people who test your patience. Instead of seeing those as obstacles to the real work, I’ve been trying to see them as part of the work. Opportunities to serve. To be kind. To give someone the benefit of the doubt in a way I would want. I don’t always succeed, but the attempt has brought meaning to my interactions. I’ve always thought psychoanalysts needed a psychiatrist themselves, but Carl Jung nailed it when he said: “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.”

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This sounds like too much”—it feels that way when you’ve been trained to be perfect, to do more, to always be better. This has been an evolving change, with fits and starts and moments where I sink back into the old narrative.

So I’ll leave you with this question—the one that started it all for me: Do you like your daily life, or do you want to get away from it?

If that unnerves you as much as it did me, don’t ignore it. There’s nothing wrong with not having it all figured out. Because even those who appear to, don’t. Yet openness to the idea of a different way can lead to profound change.

These issues are deeper than any “solution,” slogan, or banner. Yet I think asking yourself: Can I bear the thought of this vacation ending? Does the coming week cast a shadow that prevents me from enjoying this beautiful moment I’ve been planning for?

Because the worst vacation you can possibly take is the one you need to recover from your life.

Kent DeLay is a urologist.