Unplugged
It’s been a while since I consciously did it, but I unplugged for a while. Too tired to write consistently, too filled with a year’s constant work on so many levels at once, a lot of which involving digital media or devices. One’s head can only get so full.
Allowing myself to just read for a few days has been soothing, to say the least. And since the place where this is happening is my parents’ home in Fauch (Albi, rural South of France), with its superb view and a quiet so deep that every sound is heard three times more clearly, it’s quite a lovely experience.
But retreating from the world of work and business usually means running into myself more clearly.
How is my life going? What am I spending my energy on, professionally and personally, creatively and emotionally, and how worthwhile have my choices turned out to be? Are there options on the horizon that I hadn’t seriously considered so far, but that seem to be turning into true potential realities somehow?
You need to slow down and take your distance in order to see more clearly and take better decisions, with a rested mind.
Spending time with my parents is also inevitably a balancing act between old patterns and new ways of embracing each other. We have all come a very long way in understanding and respecting each other, but sometimes I do catch myself wishing I could somehow unplug for a while from this familiar family dynamic, too.
What would it feel like to be someone else entirely, I wonder, to have grown up in a different context with very different experiences? How much of me is my own, and how much of it is a response to my surroundings — their beauty and love, their challenges?
It’s an impossible question, since we never stop being our parents’ children, and they never stop being our parents. This is one web that cannot be unwoven, one plug that can never truly be pulled.
It is not a ridiculous question, though, for it has me reach deeper into the core of my own being. It has me question myself, and my personal behavior patterns, in ways that are by no means useless.
We are headed up into the Pyrenees mountains for a few days: just me, my husband and our nine-year old son. I’m looking forward to discovering new horizons.
That’s another advantage of unplugging yourself: no more wires to attach you, no more strings to hold you back.
I’m curious where this period of free flight will take me, and what new vistas it has to show me.
