Spring Break couldn’t come too soon. I’m exhausted. The fun part of teaching for me is working to keep my student’s distracted attention with a personal glance at my quirkiness. I’ve been completely transparent with them about my joy in having days off—whether in the form of 3 day weekends, prayers for snow days, and my excitement about SPRING BREAK! Since the fall semester, I’ve been dreaming of myself on a beach in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or even the South Florida Gulf Coast.
Sadly, those will remain dreams for now. My partner in travel crime had her request for time off from a large institution abruptly declined…too late for alternative plans for me. Life is messy, for sure.
I have been ridiculously busy lately and with the last half of the semester ahead, it will only get worse. Friends who’ve been through this with me before, are STRONGLY SUGGESTING that I stay home, buckle down, and get both caught up and ahead.
BUZZKILLERS!! Don’t they know this is University-sanctioned play time?? It’s a campus cultural ritual!
A part of me knows they are right. Regardless, I hear the surf siren beckoning me….and the smell of the sea….
I heard late last Friday night that the great Southern writer, Pat Conroy, died in his home on Fripp Island, SC. What a sad loss. Pat adopted the Lowcountry as a previously nomadic military brat when he was still in high school. If you’ve never been there, read any of his books. My favorite has always been the memoir of his year teaching on a remote island, The Water is Wide. No one can capture the complexities of the people and the uniqueness of the land like Mr. Conroy.
I choose to live in SC (Columbia, in particular) because of the easy access to both the beaches of the Lowcountry as well as the foothills of SC and the mountains of western NC—all within a couple of hours’ drive. I have places I go that are restorative and healing. They are familiar but not my usual scenery. I can visit interesting, nearby cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Charleston, or Asheville as well as smaller quaint towns like Aiken, Athens, GA, or Waynesville, NC.
Changing our scenery breaks up the ordinary and mundane. The demands can temporarily dissipate. Sometimes we just need to step out of the ordinary—out of the great ruts of our routine. This is actually the reason my friend wanted to plan a vacation. She’d been going from a demanding work schedule to weekends traveling to assist ailing parents. Her complaint was that any trips in recent years had been for family events and that she’d not had a TRUE vacation since graduate school. I hate to think of her plundering on this week…I know life’s been a mess for her lately.
Sometimes we just need to step out of the ordinary—out of the great ruts of our routine.
Changing our scenery allows our souls a short respite. A true time-out. We give ourselves a space to breathe in something other than the usual routines and sights. It gives our brains both a rest and some novel experiences on which to chew.
Changing our scenery adds to the mosaic of our life. It gives us a depth of richness that textures our experience and layers our personality with more color. It expands our awareness of the other. The other places, the other folks, the other cultures, the other ways of being, the other possibilities. It allows us to marvel.
Changing our scenery adds to the mosaic of our life. ~LiM2 Click To TweetPat Conroy himself said, “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”
We don’t have to go that far to find this journey. Yes, a trip to Ireland might be awesome, but don’t get stuck just waiting on that to happen one day. Sometimes we simply need a trip down the road for an hour or two.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” Saint Augustine
In Beach Music, Conroy wrote, “I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.” Perhaps he was suggesting that to change one’s scenery might contribute to happiness or satisfaction. I wish we could ask Pat.
So as you all begin to read the blog on Monday, I’ll be wandering the coast and the Lowcountry. Stay tuned….
Change Your Scenery because Life is Messy and Life is Marvelous.