THE BIGGER PICTURE: Our holidays are a time for ourself. They are a time to relax, be our own boss for a while and do whatever it is we want.
In this brief moment in the year, we get to work to our own agenda and set our own priorities.
The problem is, that by the time our two-week holiday comes around, most of us have lost a sense of what our priorities might be. We certainly haven't had the chance to live them in the 50 weeks beforehand.
The sad truth is that most of us don't feel as important as we truly are. As a result, we feel the need to justify our existence by doing things that might suggest we have a worth.
As an employee, at the very least, we realise that someone finds value in us - after all, they hired us in the first place.
Within our jobs, someone else is setting the agenda and we have a clear and definable role within it. Thus, as we complete task after mundane task (regardless of how irrelevant it may be to our own lives) we have a sense of feeling justified for our existence in some way.
In this particular time and place - having nothing to do with our own thinking, values or world view - we matter and make a useful contribution.
A holiday, however, marks a shift in the programme. For a brief moment, we are the centre point. There is no prescribed agenda. No direction from above. In fact, someone else (realistically speaking, the group of activists who historically brought forth our labour laws) is insisting that we need and deserve time for ourself and our own priorities.
However, our individual self-esteem cannot catch up to this ideal after 50 weeks of being numbed out and shut down.
We often have no experience of letting ourselves be the most significant things in our lives. Furthermore, we have no ability left to stick with this idea when we are given the opportunity.
What task could we possibly complete that would reinforce for us that we are important? There is none.
No wonder most of us, on our holidays, become anxious. We stress ourselves out in fear that we might waste a moment or a day. Somewhere, deep down, we know that we have been neglectful - carrying on with the motions of life without giving ourselves full value.
Now, on our holidays, we need to do things that will put a dent in that personal list of "things to do" which we've been ignoring because we didn't have some external authority giving us the "go ahead" to make us a priority.
But there is nothing we can do that will create that sense of value for ourselves. It certainly won't come from having a whipped ice cream, an extra large steak or a night of drinking - "because I'm on my holidays".
These things just reinforce our struggle to connect with our true value.
No one will highlight this struggle for us more than our children. Children tend to still have a sense of the value of their inherent existence. They continue to hold onto this, even when battling with a tremendous lack of attention from us.
When they have holidays (from someone else's imposed agenda at school and a daily routine of authoritative behavioural control), they look to us for the love and attention they have been missing, and which they need and deserve.
They need us to do this. They need our attention so that they will not lose hope about their genuine inherent value. More so, it is also painful for them to watch us behave like we are something less than who we are.
After all, our children, more than anyone else, will always hold out for the best for us.
While they are expecting that we will not be so busy and willing us out of our stupor, we want to run away. We are licking our wounds. We want hibernation. We need some way to come to terms with our own lack of empowerment, and some space to redress our issues.
Given these two conflicting agendas, it is no wonder that we run into trouble and stress on our holidays.
Having a real sense of our significance - the sheer joy of our own existence - is a state of mind we need reflected in the whole of our life.
It is a perspective on the world that needs cultivating whether we are on our holidays or not. Until we can really sense our significance, nothing we do will satisfy - not warm baths or sunshine or even sailing off on an eternally blue sea.
However, when we are able to get our priorities right, and really respond to our sense of value, the whole of our lives will improve.
We will probably enjoy the quality of our lives more, even feeling less desperate about getting our holidays.
When those few weeks do come, there is no doubt that we and all around us will enjoy them more than ever before.
Shalini Sinha works as a life coach and counsellor and presents the intercultural programme, Mono, on RTÉ Television. She has a BA in comparative religion and anthropology and an MA in women's studies.