Weird title, I know…. 🙂 Let me explain…..
As February comes to an end, I feel like I am coming out of my mental and physical hibernation. I didn’t cuddle into a cave, or stop working, but I did take a pause. I lit candles in the evening and settled in with a good book. I didn’t pressure myself to figure out what the upcoming year needed to entail. I gave myself permission to pause.
This morning, taking a moment, over a steaming cup of coffee, I let my mind wander back to last year and especially when summer slowed and days chiseled away into longer nights – and this is where my mind went…….
As fall morphed into winter, the fall leaves fluttered to the ground, the grass turned brown, and the animals slow down and snuggle in for the cold weather to come. You know who we didn’t expect to snuggle in for the winter? Humans.
Yep, we work hard during the year, then we stress through the holidays and are on the verge of exhaustion when….come January 1st….the pressure begins – what are your New Years Resolutions, what are your quarterly plans for your business, (without even stopping to acknowledge and celebrate what we accomplished the year before). Not allowing for the pause. While the natural world – aka nature – is taking a pause, rejuvenating, and resting; the majority of humans are not.
You, sweet human, reading this, are a part of nature. The modern world just makes you feel otherwise.
When the new year comes, usually deep in the winter, the rushing continues and people wonder why they are so burned out, or why their cortisol levels are out of the roof.
I can hear you saying….But wait, I have obligations, a business to run, children to take to their many activities, a crying baby in the other room. I don’t have time to take a pause!
Trust me, I know!
I was a single mother for most of my children’s growing years. I worked twelve hour shifts as a nurse, and after work, would gather the kids, and drive home to our ranch. Rush into the kitchen to get supper started – usually not even stopping to take off my coat. The two older boys and I would throw on our Carhart overalls and head out to feed the cows, horses, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, ducks, and bunnies. My daughter would chase the toddler until we made it back inside for supper.
My pause, at that time, was at the kitchen sink washing dishes. I watched out the kitchen window enjoying the scene before me. In the spring the field was full of calves frolicking around their mama’s and going in for an occasional snack. Another favorite on a summer night, was looking up at the vast sky full of sparkling stars. These were my pauses in those busy days.
Now, the ranch is sold, I live in a town, and I am semi-retired running a small business on the side. I can take a longer pause but I write this having lived the life of hardly a moment to pause and rejuvenate.
So I ask – What if you allowed yourself to slow down for 5 minutes? Take a lunch walk, hide in the bathroom with your favorite magazine dreaming of a new DIY project, or brew a cup of coffee, breathe in the richness of the beans, take a deep breath and feel a moment of bliss.
As I write this the days are getting longer and less frigid and sometimes sunny (I am in WI after all) and I feel my mind and body naturally coming out of a hibernated state. I bought seeds for my garden last week and ideas are flowing and tumbling over themselves for my business. I feel like a big brown bear shaking off his winter sleep and taking a look out of the cave’s entrance.
My pauses will not stop, even though spring is almost here…… I have become rather fond of them….
Cuddling under a blanket with a good book and a hot coffee will change to sitting under a tree with a glass of ice tea at the end of a hot summer day. Burning candles on dark winter evenings will turn to sitting at my picnic table, sketching, with my twinkle lights on around me, or my favorite – watching the lightening bugs busy themselves around my back yard.
Slowing down to pause and rejuvenate, even for a few minutes is a gift you can only give to yourself. You don’t have to earn the pause, it is yours, to take as you wish.
Jubilee door in Rome
On an added side note – this is the year of Jubilee. It is mostly celebrated in Europe and goes back hundreds of years. The year of Jubilee has held different traditions but it was celebrated every 50 years and now is celebrated every 25. It was a year of rest, debts forgiven, people returning to their families and the farm ground rested with no crops grown. Europe is celebrating the year of Jubilee this year, with many making pilgrimages to Rome. I have decided to celebrate the year of Jubilee in my own little way. I turn 65 years old this year and have worked hard my whole life. This is my year of rest, renewal, and exploring. This is my year of Jubilee.
I wish you, your own year of Jubilee, however you choose to celebrate.