A slow day
This is the third day of our week away: away from work, away from studies, away from home. We're at a mountain resort in Virginia, and we had planned yesterday as a recovery day after the drive. And we really needed that recovery day! We knew there would be stairs and no elevator, but bringing in our packs plus a week's groceries did us in. We were tired and sore, and a recovery day was just the thing. We wandered through the main inn building, having a nice, slow cup of coffee and pastry at the café and visiting the shops. Outside, a lighting company has been working on holiday decorations, and it has been a delight to see them taking shape. Amusingly, when they left for the day yesterday, they turned off all the lights. I guess there will be a big illumination event later.
After lunch in our room, it was time to do a whole lot of nothing. There's sort of a nook where the patio door is, and it is a perfect fit for a wingback chair and ottoman, including a soft blanket for one's legs. I settled in there with a nice bevvy and my e-reader nearby and just watched and thought and let my mind wander. I could see in the distance the ridge of blue--that is why they're called the Blue Ridge Mountains, after all--and in the foreground a big courtyard full of trees, chairs, and men installing holiday lights. It was perfect. The only thing missing was a cat. I stayed there for a couple of hours, woolgathering while K watched a hockey game, getting up only once to grab a snack.
Doing nothing is underrated. I don't mean just wasting time or filling time. I mean setting down all the distractions of our lives and simply doing nothing. No books. No tablets. No phones. No laptops. No television. No video games. Nature is okay, and a window is fine. And then just... be.
We need this time, bodies and brains. It's important for our health, and yet the only time we allow ourselves to do nothing is when we're horizontal. But we have a different job to do then, because sleep is a different, very important thing. No, people need down time, rest time, time to simply be. Twenty-first century America tells us that we don't have the time to waste, that we must be going, doing, achieving, always productive, always producing. Dr. Heath (2012) writes about the difficulty medical doctors can have in learning to take time for nothing, "perhaps counter intuitively, the art of doing nothing is active, considered, and deliberate. It is an antidote to the pressure to DO."
This is why nothing is the most important thing on my agenda for this week of rest, renewal, and recovery. Sitting in a chair by the window, noticing the last leaves clinging to the trees, looking on while the crew decorates for the holidays, simply basking in the utter lack of expectations--this is the medicine my heart and spirit and mind and body have needed.
After supper, we watched the concert from Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday, which was held at Tanglewood in 2018. I absolutely love the overture to Candide, and I've been wanting to see the show again after seeing a recording of it in 1993. West Side Story is amazing, and the man is just simply a freaking genius. The concert was transporting, transcendent. It was so beautiful, so affectionate, such a work of love and appreciation for this man's life and work. I could probably watch it seven more times in seven more days and not have discovered all its loveliness. It was a perfect end to a wonderfully restful, restorative day.
References
Heath, I. (2012). The art of doing nothing. European Journal of General Practice, 18(4), 242–246. https://doi.org/10.3109/13814788.2012.733691