After the Storm

Over the weekend, Toronto was belted by its first major snowstorm. On Saturday, the four westbound lanes of The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) were closed for approximately two hours due to a crash that involved 20 vehicles. Flights were cancelled, GO Train services were suspended. The weekend storm offered the perfect opportunity to stay inside, to rest and recharge.

It’s a difficult thing for me to do. Rest, that is. I feel that I should always be doing something, that I should always keep myself busy. So on both Saturday and Sunday I got up and wrote for a couple of hours. When that was done, I started in on my Christmas baking. I did laundry. Searched online for new recipes for our weekly meals. Replied, finally, to e-mails that have gone unanswered for almost two months. The winter storm may have slowed down the vehicular traffic on the streets, but I was going ahead full tilt.

It was as if I haven’t quite learned my lesson, as I explained in last week’s post. Every day I see people rushing about the city, and I’m caught up in that rush. And I can’t help but think that, just like so many others, I’m running nowhere fast. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. I want to slow down, take the time to, as the saying goes, “smell the roses.” Yet there’s this little voice that seems to be judging me whenever I’m not working, whenever I simply want to rest. Won’t I be more productive, more attuned to what I’m doing and where I’m hoping to go, if I take time to rest? I’d like to think so.

So today I’m trying to rest. This morning I wrote my Morning Pages and edited a short piece I hope to submit to a contest early in the New Year. I typed up the first part of the chapter I started rewriting on the weekend. So I guess that, by resting, I mean I’m going to make some more cookies for Christmas this afternoon. (The batch of scotch shortbreads that I made this morning are now in the freezer.)

And so it is, that whether I’m swept up in the hustle and bustle of life, or trying to take time to rest, I will try to do as Eddie Cantor counselled: “Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast — you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”