Summer Break
To me Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continuous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become known, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd, being noticed, existing individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep… Here, all this is nonsense. You exist by your smile and your presence. You exist for your joys and your relaxations. You exist in nature… As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances.
For the first time in a long while, I felt like I was on vacation. Since coming back to Vancouver, I’ve been thinking about our 10 day vacation in Ontario, trying to dissect why this experience felt so different.
Perhaps I’d finally honed in my incessant email checking. Maybe it was the day drinking and salty snacks. Or maybe I just found myself removed from the buzz of daily life.
Mornings were spent with a coffee and book. Days were filled with family visits, ushering Camila along new places or hanging out by the river and naps. We passed our evenings with family dinners, binge worthy reality TV or a campfire and stars. Things were full, but unhurried.
Maybe what it boils down to is that for the first time in a long time, I felt able to be present. I was not split between work and emails and notifications and trying to parent. It felt nice. And it leads to the thought: what if I just left it all and moved to a cabin in the woods?
But I don’t think the answers lay in doing that.
I started reading “How to do nothing” and what resonated most was the acknowledgement that rest, retreat and recharging from our devices and work, ultimately isn’t to be more productive. It’s a time to be human. To simply observe what’s around us. Not just as people who create, but as humans on this earth. I think that’s incredibly valuable, and increasingly rare to find in our day to day lives.
In a time that feels everything is competing for my attention, this feels like a monumental task to do everyday. But ultimately, where we put our attention is where we put our time and is where we find our lives. I hope you all have a chance to make the most of the last days of summer.