In Praise of Taking Time for Doing Nothing

Truckers are fortunate with those yellow road signs that warn of steep grades and advise drivers to check their brakes. On Kanan Road as it winds its way downhill onto Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, the runaway-truck escape ramp is there to stop any vehicle that has lost control.

From time to time, some of us could use that type of safety net. Personal warning signals to “ease up” aren’t as obvious as the attention-grabbing road signs. Life-alerts often start out subliminally like mild feelings that nudge at us internally. Testing brakes is responsible driving; slowing down once in a while is responsible living. Summertime provides the perfect excuse for that slowdown. Summer may be a season, but it’s also a feeling and one that can be tasted during a good solid two-week vacation break.

I have worked in the field of my passion for most of my adult life. A few years ago, I found myself entertaining a supposedly inappropriate adult desire--I wanted the summer off. The feeling sneaked up on me, and I lived with it knocking around inside for almost a year before I said it out loud. Once I did, there was no turning back. I couldn’t fathom how an extended vacation might happen, but I needed some elbowroom in my life, some room to breathe. I was just too busy, and something needed to give. I wanted to downshift from working in chronic overdrive. I wanted to spend some time alone to check in with myself and see if I was where I wanted to be and feeling what I’d hoped for.

I started by doing something I hadn’t done since I began working as an adult: I took a two-week vacation, and it changed my life.

I recorded a new message on my answering machine saying I was out of town and out of touch to spend time with my family and the four Rs: rest, recreation, relaxation and reflection.

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I needed to rest and then rest some more. I wanted the feeling of time as friend not foe. I wanted to get away from e-mail, voicemail and all the other doings of daily life that end up hogging so much time and space. I wanted to reverse my norm where I would defer recreation in favor of getting one more thing done. Instead, I wanted to put off doing anything until after I’d truly relaxed. I wanted to fall asleep in the afternoon from reading a book in a sunny nook. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to reflect and see what emerged.

So I went away and indulged in having fun and getting back in touch with myself.

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My unusual mode for time off has always been in bits and pieces throughout the year, a few days here, and a few days there. The result: I felt like I never had any time off at all. The two-week vacation changed that, and for this leisure-deprived person, it was a start. I’m not sure where the “work, work, work,” followed by well-deserved structured play thing came from, but two weeks off is a momentum breaker. How many of us pad the Labor Day weekend with an extra day and call it a vacation? Nuh-uh. Longer long weekends are enjoyable interludes, but are not substitutes for R&R;&R;&R.;

The four Rs need time to unfold. Rest and relaxation are the elixir of week one. This is the week for making important decisions such as: whether to use SPF 15 or 30 sunscreen; when to roll over and tan your back; whether to play one set of tennis or two; to have fries or coleslaw with your hamburger or hot dog; to walk or ride your bike; drink red wine or white; Heineken or Bud?

Week two can reveal another layer.

Week two can be a time to start to feel the delicious sensation of really slowing down. It can be when the process of rediscovering yourself unfolds through occasional moments of muse time. If you haven’t scheduled too much, you might allow yourself to dillydally, something that happens when you don’t realize it, when you have nowhere to be, no agenda to fulfill and no expectations to meet. Dillydallying unfetters you. It slips past the armor of self-importance and of having to do and catches you unawares as you linger over something timeless and inconsequential. It is having time on your hands to wonder what non-thing to do next, like stroll, browse, read, nap or reflect.

I found myself reflecting during my two-week break and noticed daydreams visited by old hopes, new longings and fundamental life wishes. I remembered that I once had imagined myself a writer. Because I locked horns with an English teacher in senior year of high school, I never pursued it. Watching the young people in my family eagerly pursue the things they wanted to do, I thought why not me too? Just because I’m nearing 50 doesn’t mean I can’t do whatever I want.

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When the happenings of life seem to control your experience of life, it’s time to check the brakes. Living life by following your heart is like charting your route based on your inner navigation system. To get to the market, follow the road signs; to get to yourself, follow your instincts. To feel the heat of the sun and the direction of the wind, you go outside. To feel the direction of your own self, you go inside--and that takes a pause.