vacation – The Conscious Pilgrim

receiving

I’ve recently returned from a trip with my family. My immediate family… we cast off the shackles of conventional work, boarded an international flight bound for Denver, Colorado and spent the better part of 4 days taking in a heaping helping of life affirming adventures.

The notion for the trip started with my daughter wanting to attend a concert that way coming to town that; if we’d have gone ahead with it, would have been the very first time any of us bought a ticket for a single concert that crested the $1000 mark. None of us could justify it, even that artist’s biggest fan in the house wanted to spend her hard-earned part-time paycheck on such an extravagant outing. I told her “I bet we could get on an airplane and see someone cooler for less money” and as much as I lost that bet by a country mile, we forged ahead with reckless abandon.

We bought tickets to Tyler Childers in Boulder, as all of his Canadian dates were sold out – but an open-air Saturday night concert in Boulder, right up close to the Rocky Mountains sounded like a good plan. We made ourselves a long weekend of it, stayed in a hotel I never would have gotten for myself, and threw down on thrift-store shopping, great food, concert merch, car services, $7 lattes, and at the almost-last-minute, we decided to add another concert ticket to the tab, and got to see Sierra Farrell at The Mission Ballroom while we were in Colorado as well.

I had a great trip with my gals, and my daughter is still beaming through the exhaustion from this whirlwind adventure. It was 100% worth it.

The part that I couldn’t put an earthly value on, was completely losing myself in the most life-affirming way. The type of show that would make a weaker musician give up entirely made me want to play more, write more, tour more, and push my own boundaries more than ever.

My soul was fed and nurtured by both of those incredible artists and I’ve never been more sure of what I’m supposed to be doing… and make no mistake – I was really sure before.

I was given a gift in my attendance of these shows that I won’t soon forget. I am eternally grateful.

deserving

To feel like you deserve something can be a bit… funny. For me, anyway. For you; maybe it’s easy, but as someone who can’t help himself when it comes to the etymology and history, and who tries in ernest to be grateful for all things, and who fully acknowledges that all success is a gift from God (or Krishna, as it was explained to me, but that’s another tangent), it feels funny to look around my house that I will eventually own outright from the bank, chock full of wonderful musical instruments, vintage automobile parts, and among other things, the beautiful people I get to live out my days with and think “I deserve more.”

As I write this; we, as a family, are discussing an upcoming vacation. It won’t be a lengthy one but it will cost some money that we’ve saved for this precise application. After months of scrupulous saving, it’s suddenly time to ‘flip the switch’ and become decidedly un-precious about the fruits of our labour.

We are reserving hotel rooms, and buying plane tickets, and have already purchased concert tickets – the impetus of our journey. It’s taken a bit of time to change gears from the saving mentality to the spending mentality, and the word that brings us all into this place of feeling abundant is ‘deserving.’ As in “We deserve this.”

‘Deserving’ shares a root word with a superfluous dish that often follows dinner. An unnecessary indulgence, but an indulgence nonetheless. According to Krishna (and most other deities, I’m sure), we ‘deserve’ precisely fuck-all, and it is through the grace of God that we are permitted these indulgences. So it is not because we are ‘deserving’ of this vacation hat we are allowing ourselves to go, but by grace and grace alone.

It would do me – and probably you – well to remember these things in all that we do.

So I’ll try to seek joy in all things, because joy is like beauty in that it fades with time, especially if you are not choosing to find it where you are looking. We tip the people who are tasked with serving us in the hotels and restaurants we patronize, not only on this trip but in all our travels… this is how we tell people they are doing great work. But are we truly thankful for their efforts? Or do we feel we deserve them? As if we are ‘owed’ somehow…

As someone who is fairly tight-lipped in social settings, I’ll do my best to reach out and let people know they are appreciated.

It will mean more when my heart is in it.

what’s more

I can’t be the only one coming out of the holidays feeling like a bag of shit. This is something I’ve spoken about before. Beyond the nutrient lacking dessert-fest that the void between Christmas & New Years can be, beyond the complete upset of routine and schedule, beyond the stresses of people-pleasing and anxiety-inducing familiar visits, spending money for the sake of spending money, and yes – even genuine excitement, is the event itself.

Steeped in tradition, wrapped in a bad sweater, and wrung out over the dining room table is that little nugget of an event that we’ve blown way out of proportion. It; too, is exhausting – as exhausting as the contemplation of how we can do Christmas better next year: “Should we host a meal?“ ”should we hide under the blankets until it’s over?“ ”should we give ourselves an early gift of a tropical vacation that takes us away for the holidays?“ ”should we spend less?“ ”should we favor quality over quantity?“

There’s no right answer, and there’s no wrong answer, and for most of us, the month of December will once again take on a life of it’s own, flinging us to the edge of our social capabilities before demanding a resolution for January 1st no matter what we think we’re deciding now.

I have a child – and just one – so calling a moratorium has never been an option, but fortunately that child ages each year, and gradual changes are inevitable, which honestly helps keep me interested.

But this…

This feeling of post-holiday malaise feels similar to the day after running an endurance race. I’ve run an endurance race and I can make that comparison with freedom, but if you’ve never done it and are still willing to compare the Christmas holidays to running a marathon, I will assure you that you’re not far off.

Christmas for my family, which has historically been a long, drawn-out ordeal has been summed up quite nicely into 3 days. Next year, I hope to narrow it down to 2 – and preferably not consecutively.

On December 22nd I ran 10 kms and on December 26th I ran 7 kms and in between was a blur. I’m comforted by the fact that running 7k on boxing day is not something most people did, and that it set my head right. I’ve definitely shaken off the holiday blues faster than ever before but it still came up and surprised me all the same. Perhaps it is constant. Perhaps I could even set my watch to it’s predictable intrusion.

But feeling this way is not wrong.
I just hope you can shake it off when it’s time.

You don’t have to be a sloth for that week between Christmas & New Years… but you don’t have to beat yourself up for not being productive, either. Just act when it’s time to act.
And when the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling above you, but your own mask on before helping anyone else.
In other words…
Just be kind.
To you.
And then everyone else.