Our anniversary is coming up this week. The plan is to have no plan and just drop off the map for a while. We’re going to “staycate,” something we learned to do when we were young and money was tight but still remains one of our favorite ways to spend time together. We love traveling but we never feel a deep need to get away and rest because, well, we spend a lot of time resting right here. And despite what you might think, as a general rule, Tina and I are not very busy.
Life is full—yes—and schedules are full—always—because there’s so much to do and be and see and learn and enjoy in this life—so most days, we are all about it. Nevertheless, we’re rarely busy, if by busy you mean too preoccupied or too distracted to breathe deeply, smell the roses and enjoy the moment.
Turns out, not being busy is a very practical thing. Down time, quiet time, stillness and simplicity, is often when I end up solving the biggest problems and giving birth to the most creative ideas. But I don’t do it for that reason. If you intentionally go searching for answers in rest then you’re back at work again and the secrets stay locked away.
We schedule down time just as religiously as we schedule work. We work hard and then … we just don’t. We’ve come to call that time, “drifting.” Our life is like rowing a boat on a river. There’s a time to sweat and strain and row and row, but then, when it’s time to stop rowing, we put down the oars, sit back, and let the river take us where it will. We drift.
Drifting may seem like you’re losing ground, but actually it’s when entire sections of my mind start to fire on. Parts that don’t get attention when we’re rowing. Still, a lot of folks avoid drifting. For instance, if you spend your life running from certain thoughts or feelings and you stop for a while, well, they catch up with you. At first that may seem terrifying but in the end it’s probably just what the doctor ordered. The philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I agree.
One of my heroes, and one of California’s heroes, the great naturalist John Muir knew how to drift. Muir was concerned about people chasing material wealth but ending up “time-poor.” He feared what he called “… the decent deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort … too time-poor to enjoy the keenest delights which earth can offer.”
Tina and I fear it too, so as often as possible, we drift.
Drifting is not without cost. An intentionally simple life will probably cost some material wealth, maybe some professional advancement, but what you get back in return is you, and time.
Time to get healthy. Time to face your demons. Time to notice the little things (because most of life is little things). Time to rest and re-create. Time to just drift. Time to build yourself a beautiful life.