As I walk through the crowd on the International Tourism Fair in Belgrade I can feel the dissatisfaction in the air. It is thick and  soggy and foul–like everything else around us, and therefore invisible.

Why do people want to travel somewhere else, lured by fancy offers of colorful prospects and forced smiles of tourist agency staff? Because they’re happy? Or because they are not?

We don’t have a home. We don’t belong. We’re outcasts in our own houses in our own countries. So we’re looking out to the world and hoping we can remedy our depression by taking a break in a colorful, unknown land among strangers and free of duties. We call it vacation. But vacations don’t bring us home, they don’t make us happy.

Turist fairs wouldn’t attract anyone, if people were content. When people are connected to their environment and their neighbours they don’t want to go for a “vacation”. Their home is a vacation. Travelling is done only out of need or duty. But today everything is topsy-turvy, because dissatisfaction sells well, and happiness doesn’t.

Next time you decide to go for a vacation think: why are you going anywhere and why wouldn’t you make your entire life a vacation? Why not? Life is full of opportunities, we just have to allow them to become reality.