Last Thursday, Mrs. P and I played hooky, joining in-law in-laws in a therapeutic jaunt to the Philadelphia Flower Show (pictures tomorrow, kids!).

The excursion came in the midst of what seems to have been (and promises still to be) an endless string of weeks of overwork, broken only by late-night Olympic viewing accompanying late-night dinners. (Well, to be honest, I’ve also spent a lot of time here, though not much in the past week; poor Mrs. P, on the other hand, has had nary a break.) 

And that, class, is the lesson for the day. 

What refreshed us on the day of this mini-vacation was not the sight and smell of the bright flowers in the midst of a long, cold, snowy winter. (Though they certainly helped!) 

What we needed was a break from the routine, the rut, the same-old, same-old that erodes mind, body, and spirit as it channels life to the same hollow spot, filling the depression with stagnant water that breeds vermin and leaches toxins into the soil. 

I begin each day open to Life’s beauty and wonder, prepared for glimpses of the sacred in the good-morning kisses that the sun plants on the Big Maple and the joyous lauds of the cardinals. I stop occasionally in the midst of labors to smile at the industrious hunger of the squirrels and the loping, soft foraging of the deer that come visit. Seated at my desk, I pause from time to time in the midst of sometimes numbing work to feel a rush of pleasure, better than any drug, at being surrounded by our books and the photos, pots, and figures that enshrine and revive our memories. I’m heartened by the extra minutes of sunlight that promise languid ecstasy to come, should we ever be able to stop to relish it.  

But these brief indulgences cannot fully sustain the soul in the midst of the daily drone of duty, a mechanical hum that Borg-ifies us, perversely transfiguring flesh and spirit into gears and wheels. As welcome as these sights and sounds may be, they do not relieve the shoulders of the burden of deberes, the pile of to-dos that, like a malignant tumor, only grows and frightens, or the worry that, like a blow to a scab, renews pain and causes fresh bleeding from a once-forgotten wound.  

Sometimes, a person needs a break.

You need to pull out from the drudgery and remember that life is to be lived, not gotten through. You need to remind yourself that there’s another kind of deber: the duty to nurture the soul so that it can flower, like Mrs. P’s most recently blooming orchid.  

Words and picture © 2010 AtHome Pilgrim.

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