Having just returned from a week of holiday-ing on the west coast of Oregon, I am still living in the residual joy of that time away from the day-to-day responsibilities.
Getting away is amazing. Away from work, and the phone, and making dinner, and doing laundry, and all the rest of the same old, same old.
Then we return home, after time away, and revel in that very same, same old. We return and have refreshed thoughts about our jobs, try new recipes, make our suitcase-smelling clothes fresh and clean and reach for the phone to re-connect with our families and friends.
According to the definition (above) a holiday is a holy day, a day when work is suspended to celebrate an event … you know, an event, like Monday, or August, or Christmas, or … (you fill in the blank).
Though an extended time away from work is a great blessing, a holiday can be any day that we bring a holiday mindset into its beginning and sprinkle it through to evening.
As I prepare my mind for the beginning of a new sc—l year (I am simply not ready to say the word yet 😉 ), I am thinking that I need to incorporate the idea of holiday into every week.
I need to spend my lunch break, at work, going for a walk, or chatting with a co-worker about anything but work.
I need to include a dinner each week in candlelight.
I need to spend the end of my day reading a fiction novel (no self-help, DIY or factual reading).
I need to walk on a beach … any beach, at least once a month (even in the rain … I love it on vacation, so why not on a Saturday afternoon in November?).
I need to make plans with those people who we always say, “we should get together sometime,” and never do. Holidays are perfect for those sometimes.
I need to laugh, from the belly.
I need to dream.
I need to reflect.
I need to plan and look forward to the next vacation holiday, be it a weekend or a longer time away.
What do you need to do, in order to attain more holidays throughout your year?
“The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
itsawonderfilledlife 