I exclaim a lot that it is amazing to get away from your day to day existence and forget your “now”, but in between trips away it’s almost as if I forget how truly wonderful it can be to turn off your phone and drive until the city lights are just a memory and the only sounds are a house’s creaky floorboards and nature outside the window. This past weekend I retreated with some friends to a farm. I hung my laundry on a clothesline, picked fresh eggs, and cavorted through the tall grass for no particular reason other than it made me feel free and good. It rained most of the time there and yet, I don’t have one negative thing to say about the entire experience.
It’s not like I’m an investment banker, living in suits and a high rise in Manhattan— but still I feel like the city stressors are common to so many, except maybe people who live in the way outer boroughs, where there are houses with yards. To throw that all away at the weekend and commit to being out of touch has become increasingly appealing to me, and I think to many of my friends. At 24, we’re not old, but we’re not 20 anymore either. The pace has got to slow down sometimes, allow us time to think about the direction we want our lives to take, whether that is personally, professionally, or physically. Plus, it’s nice to not be available—at all—for a whole weekend. I often think, if life was like it was in the olden days of no electricity and no modern amenities, we’d get a whole lot more done and perhaps be a whole lot happier. Certainly my list of books to read would be shorter. But I guess I’ll never know, except for those blissful weekends when I can pretend.
