The weekend as metaphor.
Going bush. Leaving town. Logging off.
I love these words because they signify Escape. Adventure. Downtime. Playtime. Ever since i was a kid i've loved the experience of packing a bag knowing that i was leaving home for a few days. There's something exhilarating about it.
Why? Because home is a known quantity. A kind of space-time continuum whose rhythms are familiar and comforting (and terrifying in a Ground Hog kind of way). But away brings on the the buzz of the unknown. The road less travelled. Life's unmapped terrain, crackling with potential. The prospect of a weekend away is one of promise. A chance to leave the humdrum of daily life and taste something else: the life i could have led; the life i could still lead if i only had the guts.
Time away is for me an opportunity to try on new ways of being with myself and with others. A time to experiment. A chance to be someone else, or a chance, perhaps, to be more authentically myself. That's part of what i wanted from my experience at the New Warrior Training Adventure: the weekend away as metaphor for self-enquiry and experimentation.
But there was more than that going on. At a much deeper level I was there because i was sick of myself. I desperately wanted to be somebody else but i had no idea how to begin being that person. From the outside, my life might have looked okay - I had the conventional badges of middle class respectability and success. But life sucked.
I felt jaded. Isolated. Friendless. Abandoned. I hadn't actually teased apart this clot of feelings and beliefs before i got to the weekend. But I could feel them dragging on me. They weren’t clear articulated statements so much as lead weights in my head, my heart, and my balls. Somewhere inside me the weekend represented the idea of a new horizon: a place where i might glimpse a better way to be with myself, my loved ones, and the world around me.
I love these words because they signify Escape. Adventure. Downtime. Playtime. Ever since i was a kid i've loved the experience of packing a bag knowing that i was leaving home for a few days. There's something exhilarating about it.
Why? Because home is a known quantity. A kind of space-time continuum whose rhythms are familiar and comforting (and terrifying in a Ground Hog kind of way). But away brings on the the buzz of the unknown. The road less travelled. Life's unmapped terrain, crackling with potential. The prospect of a weekend away is one of promise. A chance to leave the humdrum of daily life and taste something else: the life i could have led; the life i could still lead if i only had the guts.
Time away is for me an opportunity to try on new ways of being with myself and with others. A time to experiment. A chance to be someone else, or a chance, perhaps, to be more authentically myself. That's part of what i wanted from my experience at the New Warrior Training Adventure: the weekend away as metaphor for self-enquiry and experimentation.
But there was more than that going on. At a much deeper level I was there because i was sick of myself. I desperately wanted to be somebody else but i had no idea how to begin being that person. From the outside, my life might have looked okay - I had the conventional badges of middle class respectability and success. But life sucked.
I felt jaded. Isolated. Friendless. Abandoned. I hadn't actually teased apart this clot of feelings and beliefs before i got to the weekend. But I could feel them dragging on me. They weren’t clear articulated statements so much as lead weights in my head, my heart, and my balls. Somewhere inside me the weekend represented the idea of a new horizon: a place where i might glimpse a better way to be with myself, my loved ones, and the world around me.
posted by everyman at 2:40 PM
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