Accomplishing relaxation

Relaxing is just so hard to get done.  I think that’s because I think about relaxing the same way I think about work; my time relaxing must be structured, and I must get a certain list of things accomplished as I relax.  This unspoken, insane ‘to-do-list’ attitidue infects that little time I do have to relax, quickly delivering me right back to another work week without the recharge I need to survive it.

My beautiful wife and I decided to take a long weekend upstate to get away from the city and enjoy God’s beautiful creation.  What is so frustrating about only a few days in the paradise of mountains, streams, and woods, is that a few days is not long enough to truly enjoy what we’re surrounded by.  Nature must be basked in; it cannot be experienced in a moment’s glance or a quick drive by.  This is not how it always was, though.  Nowadays, we are constantly surrounded by the sterility of concrete, brick, and steel in the city; beauty exists there, but in a complex, convaluted sense:  a mess of human creations meant to increase efficiency and multiply the connections we can make between businesses and friends.  The city is created to give us more, more, MORE!!!  Nature gives us what we need and that only, a concept we have magically escaped from as a generation of technologized patrons of excess.

So when we take a step outside of this grand human invention to the simplicity of nature, our minds immediately continue along the trajectory they are accustomed to: git ‘r done.  It was tempting to plan a weekend of accomplishments for ourselves, but what ever happened to silence, solitidue, solice?  We have gone and made our lives too complicated, so complicated that we cannot even escape from the complexity for a long weekend.

One day, when eternal rest comes, I hope that this flawed nature has been removed.  Then, perhaps for the first time, I will be able to relax and enjoy, unafraid of the need to accomplish something.  We will accomplish things then, too, but there will be no need for accomplishments, only the desire to create and the will to glorify the God who has created and given much for us to enjoy. 

Oh how I long for those days.

For now, I will try my darndest to simply enjoy my wife and the scenery that surrounds us, looking gleefully forward to what I know awaits us in the future grandeur of the Kingdom.  

                                                                                                 -Alyosha