Fall is my favorite season. Cooler temperatures and leaves that burst into brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and brown make my heart happy. It almost feels as if the universe is sending a signal to the rest of the world that it’s time to start picking things up and putting them away for the year. That it’s time to start slowing down.
I don’t think we get that message.
As a general rule, we are so busy. In particular, in the fall, we ramp things up and get them going again at a breakneck pace. School is back in session, sports start back up again, and we are inundated with the realization that Christmas is only four months away. It’s time to get busy.
So we live in this weird juxtaposition. Nature seems to whisper to us “Slow down.” If we even can hear nature’s whisper, we just shout back “We don’t have time to slow down. We’re much, much too busy!”
I think we’ve got it backward.
I wonder how different we would be as a people if we followed the rhythms of nature when it came to how we worked and rested. What if we worked hard for six days a week and then actually rested on the seventh? What if we took every seventh week off? What if we did the same every seven months? Or years? Imagine how much of a difference we could make in our own lives and in the lives of the people we influence if we could literally take every seventh year off. Wow.
I know the majority of us are not farmers, but what if, instead of following the whims of our current society, we instead followed the planting seasons? We worked our butts off to plant our thing in spring, worked just as hard maintaining that thing through summer, and then reaped our harvest in the fall. After the harvest we wrapped it all up and took the winter to rest from our work.
How would we be different if we didn’t try to fit all of our rest into 2 weeks of vacation and maybe some time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas?
These are just some thoughts I’ve been playing with, but I think there’s something there. I’ll write more about this in a future post, for sure. I want to find the right rhythm of work and rest for me and my house. I’m wishing the same for you and yours.