Ever feel that you’re disconnected from the rest of the world? I’m not completely disconnected but I am far enough away from home that I am without the technological comforts of home. We’re in Dwellingup for a couple of days and so we’re facing life without immediate access to billions of terabytes of useless information. How will we survive? Quite well I would suggest.
Don’t get me wrong, we still have access to most television stations, even if reception isn’t 100% crystal clear, our mobile phones have full service and we have a number of choices in electronic entertainment. What we don’t have is the Internet or any SBS Television reception, so staying up to date with live coverage of the final moments of the Tour de France is proving to be a problem. It’s not a complete technological detox, more of a partial fast. (Feel free to text me with results of the Tour de France. Just remember to be gentle with me if Cadel Evans doesn’t win.)
Now to the positive side of things. We’re staying in a wonderful A-Frame cottage with a roaring wood fire and huge servings of relaxation. Carol King’s Tapestry is playing in the background and I’m tapping out this post on my ‘disconnected’ iPad. I don’t have to rush the post because I won’t get to publish it until we next drop in to some place with wi-fi or 3G coverage.
Life is good
Life is good, very good, and it’s not the times like this that make it good, it’s times like this that we have opportunity to reflect on how good it is all the time. When we’re rushing from one thing to the next we can focus on the struggles and difficulties that we all experience, but when we slow down, take a breath, and look at the whole picture, we start to gain a little clarity. Life is tough and there will always be battles to be won and obstacles to be overcome, but that’s all part of the journey we travel. Life is tough, absolutely, but life is also very good.
I’m dispensable
One of the things I love about taking time out is the reminder that the world can do just fine without me. I am not the answer to the world’s problems. I am not even someone who is essential for my workplace to continue functioning. If I met with an untimely end anytime soon, the world would go on.
That may sound morbid but to me it’s incredibly freeing. It’s an enormous weight off my shoulders when I remind myself that I am simply walking through life one step at a time as God leads me. Yes, I am an important person in the lives of a few people and I have the privilege of doing some important stuff in my work but I’m just a very small, dispensable, cog in the machinery of life. I’m not the saviour of the world but I know the one who is and he’s far better at running this crazy world than I could ever hope to be.
I’ll be back
Our time here won’t be long, in Dwellingup I mean, but I’m hoping it’ll be a time of refreshing for our little family. I’ll be connected again before I know it but the secret is to take the lessons learned in times like these back into the busyness of life.
When was the last time you took time out? Did you manage to relax and de-stress? Did your time away from routine change the way you approached things when you returned to your normal day to day life?
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