TAKE A VAC(RE)ATION!

It’s a blue sky kind of day. The tree line brushing up against it sways in a friendly motion, inviting you down a gentle hill to greet the sound of a crystal-clear river. You walk along a dirt path, salted with gems glinting in the sunlight, until you meet the bank of the river and find a relaxing place to sit.

The coo of the rolling water draws your focus to a single spot on the river and then moves you in deeper, below the surface to the bed that channels it. The smooth rocks on the riverbed whisper a question into your consciousness, “Is your focus on this spot seeing the river fixed, or is it moving?” Life is much the same way.

Are you constantly working to settle into life, or allowing life to carry you through your work?

We commonly condition ourselves to land a stable job, find a permanent residence, secure an education that fosters a well-founded skill set, and then make room to grant our desires to flow over these foundations through intermittent windows of time. If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “I need a vacation,” you know what I’m talking about.

What is so special about vacations that we don’t receive from everyday life?

Another way to ask it may be, what is escaping our attention from everyday life that demands the need for a vacation?

Vacations can represent many different things to us, from a change to break up the monotony of everyday living, to an escape from the demands of work and home life, to the fulfillment of dreams and desires long sought after and rarely available.

We need stability in our lives to feel grounded, comfortable and safe, as well as to create enjoyable opportunities. To provide for ourselves and others, the job, home and education become essentials. Yet it seems that these basic forms of support come at a cost, and for some a sacrifice, and that is our time. However, “seems” is the keyword here.

The preoccupation of the standard demands of life often cause us to think or say, “I would love to do this or that, I just don’t have the time.” The tricky perception flip here is realizing that we ultimately have the freedom of choice with how to fill our time. All things are possible, we just have to get crafty and understand how we make time for our desires in life, ultimately living a fulfilling life of passion, rather than feeling that we are ‘too busy’, having an allotted time to create those desires and experiences.

Release your true nature! Jump in and let yourself go with the flow of the Universe!

Adaptability is the essence of this flowing force. When we’re young we exhibit this quality without restraint, and it’s how we grow into the capability of doing so many things:

• Developing even the most basic communication skills up to creating influential books and speeches
• Learning math as a rudimentary form of budgeting to wielding calculus in aeronautics or accounting major business deals
• Hip-bopping as a baby to learning choreographed dancing for personal or public entertainment
• Basic self-care and hygiene maintenance to healing illnesses and nurturing generations of the young and elderly

Constantly learning when we’re young is what stimulates our growth, yet we tend to forget that we should never stop growing. Our drive to satisfy the need for stability and a certain kind of stature later on in life mirrors a shift from our openness to change to a tenacious affiliation with the idea of permanence. Our innate capability to adapt begins to stiffen into expectations, and from there, disappointment when those expectations are not met.

Voila! A subtle urge grows from this transition in perception toward life like an itch under the skin. We achieve the stability we seek and the need for a vacation from that stability arises from it. We have fallen out of practice with our true nature, as well as our connection with the nature of the Universe.

Though it happens slowly over our perception of time, the Universe and everything in it is always changing. Always. We create language for difficult situations or obstacles to imitate this notion, such as “roll with the punches,” “go with the flow,” “be loose,” “keep moving,” and so on. Just like the river, even if we are focused on one spot in our current life, we can still allow change to flow through it consistently.

So how do we reintroduce ourselves to this natural ability? We make time for new or developing experiences in our daily lives, sating that itchy urge that speaks to our ever-evolving souls.

Vac(re)ation = re-creating the idea of vacation

Let’s create mini-vacations as frequently as we want in our lives! It’s as simple as carving out a little time each day to dedicate to our personal desires.

• Create a vision board
  • Looking to travel, save up for a new home or other material embellishment in your life? Fill a poster board, spot on a wall or your fridge door with photos of what that looks like to you and put it some place where you’ll constantly see it. That will help you hold your vision and maintain your inspiration to bring it further into your reality, growing your desires into fruition.
• Find activities to spend quality time with your loved ones
  • Keep a notepad on hand and write down anything that you or your loved ones think of that you’d like to do together. Then establish a time for each week, just as your job would for a meeting or a project, when you can do something from the list together that’s already scheduled so there’re no exceptions to detract from that time.
• Dedicate a window of your day to developing a personal skill, hobby or interest
  • Even just 15 minutes a day spent fulfilling a small desire of yours will stimulate the need for fluid, small change in your life and satisfy an expansion of personal growth. Your desires will be met and you’ll feel your quality of life improving.

Everyone needs a vacation in life and an outlet for their creativity, but no one should have to put it off for when they ‘have time’. We create our own time just as we create the reality of our lives. Why not make it something we truly enjoy?

“Practice a discipline 15 minutes a day, every day, and in a year’s time you will be an expert.”
~ Albert Einstien