That’s the sexy term for it, which is really, in the dialect, called “panimuko” or “panimuron” sa balay, which means to stay in the house or to stay home. Staycation, or stay-cation, is spending one’s vacation at home or near one’s home.

Faith Popcorn had an even sexier name for it: cocooning, to stay inside our homes and really live there, to mount activities within the parameters of your house, perhaps to play, to watch movies, to paint, to cook, plant a flower, maybe to meditate.

With the holy days just around the corner, staycation should be one of our options, and not simply because of poverty. For many people, in fact, staycation, can really be a genuine break from their daily grind, especially for the wage-earners and the corporate rats who work the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. beat.

Isn’t it so? If you pound the workplace eight hours a day with just two days off a week, chances are you have started, if you have not yet, to become a stranger in your own home.

Most wage earners leave the house early and come back late. The house is really just a bedroom, and for these types, which I think most of us belong to, to stay in the house longer than 48 hours straight must be a treat.

Staycation means getting reacquainted with every nook and cranny of your own home, perhaps to even appreciate the color of your curtains or the design of your tiles. All this time, you’ve seen the office for far longer periods than you’ve had your own house. Time to appreciate it, to see where the sun’s rays fall in the morning, noon and afternoon – they fall on different places, believe me, and change the places they hit every so often. If you look closely, you’ll realize you get the sun differently at each time of the day and of the year. What does that matter, you might ask. Well, perhaps in the process of finding out, you’ll get a little diversion from the cares and troubles of the world and be able to breathe beautifully slow, and slowly bring back balance into your life.

You don’t get that by packing up and bundling everybody and everything up and heading some place far from your usual routine. Sometimes, in our desire to have the perfect vacation, we can lose ourselves in the checklists, so to speak, and forget the real reasons for going on a break.

And so, we do checklists of things to bring, and things to do. We plan ahead, put together an itinerary, sometimes buy the things we need, pack, drive, fly or sail, unpack, and then before we know it, we’re doing the same things again and heading home. Sometimes, we even do not feel the time fly by because of the myriad little details that we impose on ourselves for the perfect vacation.

I’m not saying going on a real out of town vacation is not good, I’m just pointing out the advantages and even joys of staying in your house and staying there for a prolonged period of time.

Many of us of course equate staying home with something akin to a punishment, as part and parcel of our poverty. The moneyed go out of town or even abroad for the holidays, the poor stay home and sulk. It's like taking a break out of our homes was some badge of accomplishment while having to stay was some form of atonement.

But oftentimes, it’s when we look inwards that we find the most joy because then we are not distracted by the externals. Isn’t that, by the way, the meaning and reason why we celebrate Holy Week?*

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