This Labor Day weekend, I’m savoring the last days of summer, but also feeling that I did not spend enough of it in the right way. I spent too much time working.
I know I’m not alone. Nearly one in four Americans get no paid vacation at all and no paid holidays. Many who do get paid time off are reluctant to take it because of workplace pressures.
I was more fortunate than many, however. Over the last two weeks, I did almost no work for nine days. I read two novels. I dropped my son off at college, took long car trips with my husband, saw friends, hung out with elderly relatives. At my father’s house, I had time to help with house tasks: putting up fences to protect fruit trees from marauding deer, moving a bookshelf off the porch. I spent time watching a pond that was, at different times, both lively as hundreds of hopping frogs and still as ramrod-straight little blue herons. I noticed that if you’re quiet enough, the buzzing of a tiny hummingbird’s wings can be surprisingly loud, like a motor, and that it’s funny how a woodpecker thinks everything is a tree. I got lost in mossy forests and admired the surf off the rocky coast. I listened to coyotes at night. I had an incredible Hawaiian massage from my niece.
When I got back home to New York City, I did not immediately catch up on work, email, or chores; instead, I went with friends to take in the public joy that is the Bronx’s Orchard Beach — the cleanest beach on Long Island Sound — where we swam, enjoyed the weekly Sunday salsa party, and saw a great egret.
All this enjoyment was justified, but not because I’m especially deserving. Nor was it merited because now, rejuvenated, I’m more productive. I’m probably just the same as I was before: same periodic flickers of intelligence, same woolgathering, same laziness. But the break mattered because there is more to life than work. We all have families, friends, and a beautiful world to enjoy.
This is not…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
