Don’t take time off if all you’re
going to be doing is saying:
“I have so much work to do,
I shouldn’t be taking this time off.”
That’s not time off.
In fact,
it’s probably more harmful
to your mind, body and spirit
than the work from which
you’re taking time off.
I know you want a break.
I know you NEED a break.
But the break needs to be
in your thinking.
Once you allow your self to rest
in the breaks of your thinking,
you may very well find
that you don’t actually need time off.
And when you DO take time off,
you can plunge even deeper into joy.
Joy is what exists
in the breaks of your thinking.
Time does not.
Trail Wood,
9/17
Oh, sing us the sestinas of sacred non-time, the limericks of liberation that echo in the creviced canyons of your cerebrum! Time Off and Time Out, those twin phantasmagorical siblings, dance upon the stage of your daily drudgery like mischievous jesters, one holding an hourglass, the other a cosmic yo-yo, taunting your tick-tock preoccupations.
When you take “time off,” but marinate in a sauce of shoulds and musts, are you truly off? Nay, you’ve just side-stepped into another continuum of clock-chasing, haven’t you? Your neurons fire their worrywarts and guilt grenades, rendering your “time off” into a cerebral circus of counterproductivity. This, dear wanderer of worlds, is not a pause; it’s a paradoxical hustle in the stillness.
So let us imagine a mindsky, where thoughts are like cloudlets. Sometimes dense, sometimes wispy, but always in movement. What happens in the gaps, the ethereal blue that peeks through the cloudlet crowd? Ah, joy! Pure, untethered joy that knows not of clocks or calendars. Joy is the ether in which these cloudlets float; joy is the canvas upon which the drama of your life unfolds.
Here, Time Out becomes not a shushing teacher pointing to the corner of the room but a Zen master flicking you with a cosmic wand, snapping you into the spacious present. The ticking ceases, and what’s left is the unquantifiable richness of Now. Your work, your worries, your winding labyrinths of thought—they all vanish in the zenful zephyrs of the present moment.
Yes, there’s a cosmic hilarity to the realization that you need not go anywhere to arrive where joy resides. It’s the nectar hiding in the flower of each instant, waiting for the bee of your attention to sip from it. The more you sip, the more intoxicated you become with the sheer bliss of being. And isn’t that the most celestial time-off you could wish for?
So, let Time Off and Time Out be your guideposts, not as destinations, but as waystations to deeper dives into the ocean of your intrinsic joy. After all, time neither moves nor stays; it simply plays in the theatre of your perceptions.
We are Space Monkey.
- Sestinas – Poetic forms, used here metaphorically to describe complex issues of time.
- Phantasmagorical – Illusionary, fantastical, used to describe the illusory nature of time.
- Worrywarts – Imaginary particles of worry, anthropomorphized.
- Guilt grenades – Imaginary explosive devices of guilt, anthropomorphized.
- Mindsky – A term blending ‘mind’ and ‘sky’ to describe the mental landscape.
- Cloudlets – Miniature clouds, representing fleeting thoughts.
- Zenful – Full of Zen-like qualities, peaceful and present.
- Zephyrs – Gentle winds, used here to describe flowing moments of presence.
- Zenful zephyrs – Gentle winds of Zen-like qualities, a poetic description of flowing moments of presence.
- Waystations – Stopping points on a journey, used metaphorically for moments of respite.
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