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by Philipina A. Marcelo
I came across a truly well-written and soulful article on New York Times just now, bless my fortune! And, for the first time, I finally understood why, for the last four years, I've been dying to be on a "real vacation"... and never seeming to achieve it, no matter how far away I traveled to "get away from it all"! My "desperation" was such that I have been dreaming of retirement even before I turned 40! Whew!
Just so you know I'm not kidding you, tell me how does this sound to you:
"...I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.
"Has it really come to this?
"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight."
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Curious now?
I know, and I totally understand!
The article, "The Joy of Quiet", is written by the intellectual and highly gifted essayist and book author (among his many gifts), Pico Iyer. I admit, I have his articles on Harper and Financial
Calm...Times bookmarked somewhere electronically... but, just like my breathless anticipation for retirement, they've been kept in my will-savour-thoroughly-later list... therefore, bookmarked, and unread! Obviously, I haven't been wise in making my choices - nope! Or, maybe, I've ran myself beyond exhaustion at work and let myself get entangled in the www to the point of physical and mental immobility - royally distracted, and that's without Twitter... and without Facebook, too, for half a year now - until deeply savouring precious moments in life turned into a luxury... close to impossibility sometimes.
"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
"...We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines."
Related to this is a post in a lovely blog that I usually visit when I'm slowing down and looking for a warm place to curl up in the www.
Alright, I'm going to have to leave you alone now... and savour your very own joy of quiet.
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