By Tom Marchant
For years, wellness has meant cleansing and recalibrating our bodies. New supplements, in-vogue routines, apps that promise to optimize our lives. Increasingly, however, those invested in wellness are starting to think about how they recalibrate their time.
This slow and subtle sea change is about casting off the always-on, overstimulated noise that every family faces—as we rush through packed schedules and everyday distractions—and seeking travel that’s calmer, quieter and more connected.
At Black Tomato, we like to think of it as searching for “boredom.” But let’s ditch the idea that boredom is something we should shun. In the right place, and with the right people, boredom marks a return to what Zen masters call “beginner’s mind”: knowing that we can’t scroll our way to serenity, just as we can’t find connection when our lives are mediated by devices.
And this new affluence of attention isn’t about individual betterment—what you can do for your body and mind alone—but collective renewal. Together, families are searching for experiences that’ll help them to linger for longer, feeling more and growing closer with less “stuff” getting in the way.
Forget 30 minutes of meditation plugged between your commute and the store. This is about the conscious creation of trips that make time for stillness and give you the space to be truly present.
When we embrace this boredom, we fall into deeper conversations. Kids become more observant and more alert to the textures of the world. Parents—freed from feeling like chauffeurs, personal chefs and sports coaches—get to share these moments with them, attuned and recalibrated.
And while the “where” is important, it’s the feeling that really counts. When we planned their luxury Japan trip, Natalie and her daughter had “a chance to break out of the chaos of everyday life”—finding the time “to be silly and to linger.” That’s the thing about boredom: It’s not about staring at walls and waiting for something to happen. It’s about stripping away all the things that pull us out of the moment.
In Brazil, we’re meeting this demand by taking families into tracts of untrodden rainforest where the passage of time is marked not in moments but millennia. It’s about hammocks and sleep-outs; learning fire-craft, navigation, water-sourcing—all these tiny, tentative tasks that ask for patience and reward us with resilience.
Elsewhere, we’re helping families carve new rituals from the elements. In Norway—a country that knows the meaning of wholesome, holistic health—it’s about hiking to lakeside swims, soaking in saunas and ice-cold plunges. It’s a matter of skin contact, a shared sense of aliveness.
For today’s wellness-minded families, the real luxury isn’t a packed itinerary or a flurry of activities. It’s the rare opportunity to be together at the same time, in the same place and on the same wavelength.
This is how boredom can make a real, lasting difference in our lives. blacktomato.com