The Slowness of Sundays
I love being woken up by the gentle sunlight of a quiet morning. I love the stillness it grants and the shadows on the floor it creates. I love the feeling of tip toeing out of my room in to a quiet house, knowing my family is still off in dreamland, smiles and sighs from a place in their sleepy mind.
I love the slowness of a Sunday Morning.
However, we live in a world focused on movement. Move your body. Climb the corporate ladder. Do more. Be Busy. Push. We, as a society, thrive on packing our schedules and over extending ourselves. We use cliche sayings like “There aren’t enough hours in the day” or “I have so much on my plate,” to illustrate a busy life. Don’t get me wrong, here. I do the same thing. I fill up my calendar like a badge of honor. Look how busy I am. Look how much I’m doing.
Why?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Why do I feel the need to be busy? To be “slammed” with activities - work and life related? Why does society see that as a good thing? Why do (did) I?
As always, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do have a theory. And I should preface, before sharing my thoughts, that this is individual to me. You likely have your own reasons - maybe you’d like to share yours in the comments. No pressure.
So, with that, I digress. Let’s get to it.
I am a person that loves a plan. I like to know what my day is going to look like, that I have an idea for dinner, and a list of things that need to get done to tackle.. I’m not a huge fan of uncertainty or feeling unprepared. There are a few exceptions.:
Spur of the minute adventure (think travel).
Anything to do with live music, I’m there.
An opportunity presents itself for my kids
But that’s about it. I like to know what’s coming. So if I can Jam Pack my schedule, there isn’t a whole lot of room for the unexpected. AMIRITE??
I definitely thought I was.
This summer, though, we had a lot of unscheduled time. And the real flex was I did it on purpose. I know. Stay in your seat. As last school year began to wind down, I had a long heart to heart with myself. (Does anyone ever do that?) I thought about what I wanted this summer to look like for my kids, for me and for our family as a unit. And I had a tiny little voice speak up from the void that told me to try it. Try not having so many set plans and scheduling the days to the nth degree. You may hate it, I told myself… but what if it turns out to be beautiful. You never know if you don’t try!
And try I did. The first few weeks were still revolving around baseball - games, practices, playing the sport incessantly in the backyard. But we also snuck in impromptu playdates and trips to Malibu. We had days of not leaving the house and spending afternoons in the pool. Before I knew it, I got the hang of it. I started to enjoy the slowness of the unscheduled summer days. It felt different, but different is ok.
Looking back on welcoming an “unbusied” summer, I miss it. I miss the sporadic nature of our days and the unstructured time where we did nothing. Together. I miss not having to look at my phone to check the time because something else it next. I miss the feeling of calm and steady that I felt knowing that I don’t have to be busy to be happy or productive. I miss the feeling of having empty calendar pages.
We, as a collective, tend to measure our worth by our accomplishments. But what if the biggest achievement we can do for ourselves and the future beings inhabiting this earth is teaching the art of leading a life with less movement, less push…. less climb. What if we master the art of just being human instead. Rely less on our calendar and more on our steadiness. What if?
