This past weekend was Winter Retreat for me. Every year since 2005, on the third weekend in January, I’ve joined a group of fifteen or twenty other women to travel to a retreat house in northeast Connecticut. We have only a very general agenda for how we plan to schedule the two days ahead: mealtimes are designated, as are a couple of discussion sessions, a crafts project, a Saturday evening film screening in the retreat house’s comfortable living room, an informal Sunday morning worship service in the retreat house’s chapel space.
But no one in the group cares who does and does not participate in the loosely scheduled events, and it ends up being a weekend when everyone who attends is free to spend their time however they wish. There aren’t too many weekends in my life devoted to spending my time however I wish, and I’m always grateful for this one when the date arrives each year.
In the past six years, not very much as changed about how I like to spend this time of freedom and non-commitment. If anything, it always crystallizes for me how specific my four areas of interest are when it comes to free time: running, walking, reading, writing. And in between, conversation and bonding with the other retreat participants. But the social aspect is lesser to the amazing opportunity of devoting so many long hours to the other four.
On Saturday before breakfast, I took a six-mile run through the countryside that surrounds the retreat house. This area, as I learned when I wrote a travel article about it a few years ago, is called Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner.” In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a favorite rural vacation destination for New Yorkers, especially those in the publishing and newspaper industries. Families would pack up and head to these rolling hills so that the parents could savor the quiet and the children could swim in the ponds and play in the meadows.
Today, the area seems to be about half preserved farmland and half suburbia. Being on a retreat here isn’t exactly like being deep in the White Mountains or the Outer Cape. Cars pass along this country road regularly, and there’s a Walmart less than two miles away. But that takes nothing away from the sense of escape we all bask in here. As I ran three miles out and three miles back, I passed beautifully preserved antique farmhouses, bungalows, and small shingled homes. The air was chilly, and vapor froze on my eyelashes, but I was grateful to be able to take more than an hour for my run without feeling like I was needed anywhere else – and even more grateful for the breakfast of eggs, scones, fruit and muffins prepared by the retreat house’s kitchen staff while I was out.
And then after a hot shower, a sense of absolute freedom for the hours that lay ahead. Some of the women were gathering for a morning discussion on six-word memoirs and an afternoon project making Joy Boxes; others were taking the time for themselves, as I was. I wrote for hours throughout the course of the day, reflecting on the year just passed and sketching out tentative hopes for the year just beginning. And then when I couldn’t think about writing anymore, I walked for an hour, down the road in the opposite direction from where I ran. Tired after that, I read, and then later joined the other women downstairs by the fireplace to work on putting photos from 2010 into my photo album. The latter has become a yearly tradition for me; since this retreat always falls in mid-January, after New Year’s I order prints of all the photos I think worth keeping from the previous year and then take an hour or two during the retreat to put them all in my album.
After dinner I read until I fell asleep. Sunday morning, another run – four miles this time, and it wasn’t nearly so cold. Then more time for writing and a little bit of reading before lunch and the trip home. Other years, I’ve felt more desperate for the escape and the solitude the retreat offers. These days, life is at a point where there isn’t as much of a lack of solitude in daily life for me. When I started attending this retreat, Holly was two years old; I was home full-time with her, and Tim was only in kindergarten and home a lot as well. These days I’m alone for six hours a day while they’re at school.
But I don’t spend their time at school reading, going for walks, or writing in my journal; I spend it working on paid writing or editing assignments. So it’s still a magnificent luxury to get away once a year for two days of this kind of self-indulgence. I write, I read, I walk, I run. And I go home ready for another year, feeling rejuvenated and slightly amazed that I had the luxury of these two days once again.
Showing posts with label rejuvenate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rejuvenate. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Friday, April 30, 2010
Our electronics, ourselves: Why not recharge ourselves as faithfully as we recharge them?
As I cleaned up the kitchen late in the day, I couldn’t help noticing something on the counter. It looked like all our portable electronics were holding a little conference. Within a couple of square feet of counter space lay two cell phones, a PDA and an iPod, all silent and inert but plugged in and charging up for the new day ahead.
Why, I found myself wondering, do we remember to recharge our electronics every night but we don’t do the same for ourselves?
Well, you could argue that those eight – or more often a little more than six – hours of sleep we get every night are our way of recharging. But in a freakishly paradoxical way, I was finding something so quaint in the way all our little handhelds were lying there together resting, their battery icons blinking as if to remind me that they were receiving the necessary electricity they needed to start fresh tomorrow. I admit it’s an odd image. Usually my metaphors of sustenance come from the stars, the sky, tall oak trees, water rushing over rocks. Not cell phones and iPods.
But what struck me about this image was the sense that we were treating our electronics better than we treat ourselves. Why can’t I recharge every evening after dinner? I wondered.
Because there’s too much else to do, that’s why. Once the kids are in bed I have to return emails, make school lunches for the next day, fold laundry, get the coffee prepped to turn on first thing in the morning. I can’t sit around recharging or I won’t be ready when the new day dawns.
Really? I asked myself. In what way would you be so very unready?
The kids wouldn’t have their lunches made. (Maybe I could do that while they’re eating breakfast.) Emails would have gone unanswered. (Does anyone really need to hear from me at 10 PM? Do I really have anything to tell them that couldn’t wait until 9 the next morning?) Laundry would pile up. (Sure. And then eventually over the weekend or when I need a short break from my desk or want an excuse to take in ten minutes of NPR, I’ll stop and fold it.) More importantly, isn’t it quite possible that I’ll have just as much to offer the world if I’ve had time for reading, thinking and sleeping as if I have a tidy household every night?
So I resolved then and there to try to do things differently in the evening, starting last night. I shut down my computer at 8 PM, and an hour later, once both kids were asleep, I crawled into bed with a book. I imagined myself filling up with energy just like the gadgets downstairs: not expending what little charge I had left and letting myself run nearly dry, but stopping and sitting still and letting that well of energy within me fill up again for a new day.
It felt so good that I’m determined to try it again. As I well know, habits like this are hard to maintain. Yes, it was wonderful to sit and read last night in the evening hours during which I usually do deskwork or housework, but it felt like a one-night break, not a new routine. But who knows? I’m a firm believer in the aphorism that it takes three weeks to instill a habit. Maybe I’ll try it for three weeks and see if I feel…rejuvenated. Energized. Recharged, rather than just efficient and, well, like someone who has folded all the laundry.
Learning a valuable life lesson from one’s iPod does not exactly have a Buddhist ring to it. But now that I think about it, it’s not like our electronics made that decision on their own to plug themselves in and recharge. (Though I’m sure Steve Jobs is working on that.) I did it for them, just as I tucked my children into bed at an appropriate time so that they will be rejuvenated when the new day dawns. All I need to do is give myself the same permission to cease daily labor and take time to recharge that I give my iPod, my PDA, my phone and, yes, my children.
So the laundry goes unfolded. It just might be worth it. And as I try to instill this new habit over the next few weeks, I’m looking forward to finding out.
Why, I found myself wondering, do we remember to recharge our electronics every night but we don’t do the same for ourselves?
Well, you could argue that those eight – or more often a little more than six – hours of sleep we get every night are our way of recharging. But in a freakishly paradoxical way, I was finding something so quaint in the way all our little handhelds were lying there together resting, their battery icons blinking as if to remind me that they were receiving the necessary electricity they needed to start fresh tomorrow. I admit it’s an odd image. Usually my metaphors of sustenance come from the stars, the sky, tall oak trees, water rushing over rocks. Not cell phones and iPods.
But what struck me about this image was the sense that we were treating our electronics better than we treat ourselves. Why can’t I recharge every evening after dinner? I wondered.
Because there’s too much else to do, that’s why. Once the kids are in bed I have to return emails, make school lunches for the next day, fold laundry, get the coffee prepped to turn on first thing in the morning. I can’t sit around recharging or I won’t be ready when the new day dawns.
Really? I asked myself. In what way would you be so very unready?
The kids wouldn’t have their lunches made. (Maybe I could do that while they’re eating breakfast.) Emails would have gone unanswered. (Does anyone really need to hear from me at 10 PM? Do I really have anything to tell them that couldn’t wait until 9 the next morning?) Laundry would pile up. (Sure. And then eventually over the weekend or when I need a short break from my desk or want an excuse to take in ten minutes of NPR, I’ll stop and fold it.) More importantly, isn’t it quite possible that I’ll have just as much to offer the world if I’ve had time for reading, thinking and sleeping as if I have a tidy household every night?
So I resolved then and there to try to do things differently in the evening, starting last night. I shut down my computer at 8 PM, and an hour later, once both kids were asleep, I crawled into bed with a book. I imagined myself filling up with energy just like the gadgets downstairs: not expending what little charge I had left and letting myself run nearly dry, but stopping and sitting still and letting that well of energy within me fill up again for a new day.
It felt so good that I’m determined to try it again. As I well know, habits like this are hard to maintain. Yes, it was wonderful to sit and read last night in the evening hours during which I usually do deskwork or housework, but it felt like a one-night break, not a new routine. But who knows? I’m a firm believer in the aphorism that it takes three weeks to instill a habit. Maybe I’ll try it for three weeks and see if I feel…rejuvenated. Energized. Recharged, rather than just efficient and, well, like someone who has folded all the laundry.
Learning a valuable life lesson from one’s iPod does not exactly have a Buddhist ring to it. But now that I think about it, it’s not like our electronics made that decision on their own to plug themselves in and recharge. (Though I’m sure Steve Jobs is working on that.) I did it for them, just as I tucked my children into bed at an appropriate time so that they will be rejuvenated when the new day dawns. All I need to do is give myself the same permission to cease daily labor and take time to recharge that I give my iPod, my PDA, my phone and, yes, my children.
So the laundry goes unfolded. It just might be worth it. And as I try to instill this new habit over the next few weeks, I’m looking forward to finding out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)