Well, I'm out and about again. Having just gotten back from Spain and Chicago, Talia and I are in Nashville for a conference. I like to travel, and I like to meet new people, but finding time to rest becomes a challenge.
Is driving or flying or taking the train restful?
My Orthodox Jewish friend in Jerusalem told me they don't drive on the Sabbath and they don't walk more than a mile or two. The only reasons they travel are to walk to the synagogue, to take the kids to the park, or to go to a party.
The question is, do I drive home on Saturday night (the beginning of my rest), Sunday morning (the middle of my rest) or Sunday evening after my rest is done.
If I were in Israel, there would be no question. I would stay with friends all Shabbat and we would eat a huge feast and stay inside and we would be a little community for the weekend. However, we live in America, where we rush around in our cars every day of the week and rarely stay with friends or have feasts or participate in weekend communities. How do you rest in a culture that doesn't value it? It's easier when you stay home, but when you travel, when you are a guest in a town you do not know, what then?
I don't have answers to these questions, only that I long to live in an America that remembers what it was like when businesses were closed one day a week, when you took the kids to the park to run around, and you had as big a feast with as big a family as you could.
I guess it depends on the kind of “travelling” you’re doing–I’ve had quite a few holidays that were very laid-back and reinvigorating, but others where I was doing a lot of sight-seeing and was constantly on the move. There’s also the question of balancing the recording of the experience and the experience itself, which I never seem to get quite right. At the end of the day it’s all about prioritising and making the time to rest, whether it be weekend or not–at least, those are my two cents.
Traveling by train is certainly more restful than traveling by airplane. The pace is easy, your fellow travelers are not in a hurry, stressed and harried by security. You can get up and walk around. The scenery passes at a human pace and level. You can feel the change from bioregion to bioregion as you pass through.
The journey is a critical part of the travel experience. Flying is not travel, it is space and time annihilation. Flying separates one from the travel experience, transporting us from one anonymous terminal building to another, inside a long metal tube, with no contact with the space and time in between.
That being said, travel of itself is not restful, it is invigorating, inspiring, conducive to writing. When we travel we expose ourselves to new challenges, new people, new experiences. Travel not only broadens the mind, it fattens the imagination, opens the eyes, creates that itching feeling in our writing fingers.
Travel is an integral part of life, not just the moments between arrivals.
While I understand a certain longing for days gone by, you can create your own America. And if that is taking off one day to spend with family, you can do that. It doesn’t answer the issue if children have Sunday sporting events, or even if your family lives all over the place, but no one has to go shopping. Besides, even nostalgic America wasn’t perfect.
Could this be the post you were writing yesterday at the conference Joe? Ha!
Travel can be restful…but 99.99999999% of the time it is not, especially with kids, at least in my experience. Some of it might depend on where you are going and what you are doing.
You know, I think the weekend rest you describe here has it’s perfect, eternal counterpart in heaven. I long for communal rest; a loving and enjoying togetherness. I think our earthly Sabbath is a taste of what’s to come. I always appreciate your though provoking posts on rest.
Beck, love those words “communal rest.”
It seems I’ve spent more time on the road this year than I have in the last few years. All of my traveling has been driving and always alone. I’ve decided I like flying better because I can read, write, people-watch more easily than I can behind the wheel.
I also wonder how to disconnect myself in the age of iPhones and instant communication. Every time I try to leave me phone, something exciting happens while I’m gone. Today I left it while on a hike, and when I came back one of my best friends had called to say she was engaged. Not as exciting over voicemail…
Katie
I’ve always warmed to the idea of the European cultures who close everything down for lunch and siesta. I imagine I’d find it an enormous challenge to stop in the middle of the day…but if I did immerse myself in it regardless, that I would slow down! They say that the healthiest thing you can do is take a twenty minute nap in the middle of the afternoon (I seem to remember 2 p.m. being quoted as the optimal time). So I tried that for a while and it did have a calming, relaxing effect.
Absolutely, Yvette. The Europeans do know how to relax, and that midday siesta (all 3 hours of it!) seems to be rejuvenating. Being a westerner, I initially found that siesta time inconvenient (for me) and a waste of my precious tourist time. One year I was fortunate enough to spend a month in northern Italy, and the siesta time was cast in granite for the local people. During that month, I fell into rhythm with it. I wish I could have brought it home with me, but alas…
Thanks for your insights.
Hey Diane, thank you for commenting. I have a feeling I’d wrestle like Prometheus with having to take a siesta!!
I’m being forced to rest this weekend. I have Achilles Tendonitis and if I don’t rest it … my foot rewards me with intense pain. But most of the time … we rush here to there doing this and that … most of it with no eternal value. I want to live in a land that still values naps, family, community. Too bad America has lost that!
Beth, wishing you a speedy and complete recovery. Pain is no fun even though it causes us to slow down.
Joe, you’re in my home town! Hope you’re enjoying your stay. I like you long for those days of Sundays when stores closed, parks were filled with families enjoying each other, worship was the top item on the calendar, and moms cooked big satisfying meals. Usually, in our home, it was a quiet day with a long drive in the afternoon ending in the park and maybe, if we were all good, an ice cream cone on the way home. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Instead today, we can’t sit still for want of checking emails, reading blogs, catching sports on TV or running hither and yon. Sigh . . . .
Safe travels to you and Talia.
Travel in North Dakota, a state that sits smack dab in the middle of the USA, is restful only if you decide that is what it is to be. It is primarily a flat state where the vista goes on for mile upon endless mile. Mirages are always just a fer-piece down the way, never to be captured or splashed through.
In order to get anywhere in this state, first and formost you, DRIVE. We have four-lane interstate roads that propel us through the state at seventy-five miles per hour. We have two-lane black top surface roads in a plethora of condition: the newly resurface ones are like fine milk chocolate melting in your mouth; the older abused roads can resemble a ride on a mule with four legs of four different lengths. And we shan’t forget the gravel road, the mighty back bone of the state. On a summer evening, as the sun ebbs, to see a pickup truck headed for the home place with contrails hanging in the dewy air, I realize travel is what you make it no matter where you are.
You know what’s great? We can do this in our own lives, and in our children’s lives, and we can inspire them (and others!) to do it. You’ve inspired me to take more rest on Sunday, and really make that day a day of feasting and enjoying the company of my family. 🙂
So true. I want to give my kids an inheritance of rest.
Awesome. That’s great to hear, Sarah. Thanks for dropping by 🙂
I just got back from a ten day vacation to China and Taiwan and when I got home, I felt exhausted. I love to travel, don’t get me wrong, but there are times when even on a vacation when you’re supposed to relax and have fun, you end up feeling more tired.