Getting Away

Like most people, I don’t always appreciate the value of a real getaway vacation: the type where you take a week or two away from home, away from work, and away from the usual day-to-day issues, responsibilities, places and people.

Taking some days off to just rest at home is good, of course, but it doesn’t really help when you need to think through issues and situations in your life and perhaps make some decisions. When you try to do that at home, the issues are still too close, and it is difficult to properly sort them out, put them in the proper perspective, and chart the right course.

I have been guilty of that far too often over the past years during the annual Ukrainian New Year and May holidays. I will relish the opportunity to take some days off from work, and I tell myself that I will take time, not only to rest, but to really do the kind of serious contemplation that I can never find time to do when I am working every day.

I say that I will organize my class materials, create some new ones, look over the situation with each student and group and determine what should be changed or improved. And I promise myself to spend time in quiet thought, really analyzing my life and making some hard decisions about the near and long-term future.

Sounds great. But invariably I allow myself to sleep a lot at the beginning, and when I am not sleeping, I continue the usual home Internet routine of watching innumerable news clips, movies and other stuff of very questionable usefulness. The beginning continues through the middle of the vacation and all the way to the end. And as the inevitable return to work looms, I find I have accomplished almost nothing that I had intended.

But aside from these weaknesses of will and discipline, taking vacations at home exposes another problem: the usual life and work remain too close at hand to effectively think and plan. There are forces at work in your daily life that influence you in certain directions, no matter if these are the right directions for you or not.

But sometimes, “getting away” doesn’t really help the situation; it only puts you into a different set of influences. When I was in the USSA last September, it gave me an opportunity to think about my life in Ukraine from a distance, which was good. But at the same time, there were some conflicting interests and opinions there that worked to influence me in another direction. It was still difficult to consider everything in a clear and neutral manner.

When you really need to get away, free your mind, and open yourself to let the universe show you the way, you need a neutral location and the chance to be alone in silence. I have just returned from a week in Switzerland, which is perhaps the most famous neutral country in history. And I did find some flashes of early-morning silence, as I mentioned in my previous post, Silence.

But overall, I did not really take advantage of it. It was a short trip, and my attention was happily paid to four beautiful little girls. The purpose of this trip was not contemplation, but rather to spend time with family. Still, I found time to think a bit, write several blog posts, and to think about the need to get away from the daily routine in order to sort things out.

I am not sure when my next vacation will be, let alone my next opportunity to relax in a truly neutral environment. Maybe it would be nice to spend some time by the sea on a warm beach or (my favorite) to take in the power and beauty a mountain forest.

Either way, I know what I need. The trick now is to make it happen.
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