The wife and I had the opportunity to go away for this past weekend. It was awesome. Our friends planned this weekend and had us all get sitters for our kids, and took us up to Orcas Island in the San Juans for a weekend of pampering. Our friends just wanted to have a great weekend away with friends. It was awesome.
Depending on your perspective, there is either a lot to do on Orcas, or absolutely nothing to do on Orcas. The place we were staying didn't have a television, or a computer, so we spent the evenings either sitting on the deck, or talking in the living room. One night we played pictionary (the guys won). But other than that, we went on a short hike one day, and a drive to the top of Mt. Constitution. The bulk of the weekend was spent sitting around fellowshipping, talking and relaxing. Next to no chores. No responsibility. No pressure. No email. No deadlines. It was great.
On Monday when we were all packing up and getting ready for the drive home, reality started to set in. You could almost feel the brains of the people in our SUV cranking out the list for the coming days. We're all professionals with jobs, lives and kids, so its only natural that after a few day hiatus that our minds would gravitate to what 'needs' to be done. To be honest, it kind of put a damper on my mood. It wasn't nearly as exciting driving back as it was driving there. Driving towards a weekend of fun and relaxation is invigorating. Driving back to reality is, well, an overwhelming sense of responsibility and order.
Here's the deal though- we can't live our lives in La-La land where there are no deadlines and no outcomes. The world simply does not work that way. No matter who you are and what you do, we are a people who were created to produce, not to loaf around. Sure, there are times in our lives that we are able to relax and shuck responsibility, but that's not what the normative experience of our lives should be. We should be people who work and get stuff done.
But here's the other part of this equation though- do we shove so much into our daily lives that we don't find the time to relax and unwind? Do we pack our days so tight, and our recreation so intense that the thought of sitting around doing nothing doesn't even enter our consciousness? Perhaps an exercise in doing nothing around our normal living conditions would invigorate us to accomplish more within our normal days and weeks.
God created us to work, but he also gives us the ability to recreate. Its necessary and a blessing to do so, but we have to organize our lives in such a way that we allow ourselves the time to do it. If we're packing and stacking every last bit of stuff into our 24 hours, we will miss out on the blessing of doing nothing and end far worse off than we expect.
You may not get the chance to get away- its rare for me, but maybe you can get away where you're at, by taking some stuff off your plate and relaxing a bit.
Be blessed
matt
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