I was talking to a friend recently in London who admitted that he rarely took holidays; that, for him, his idea of hell was sitting on a beach for a week with books and no cellphone, no laptop, cut off from the world beyond. We all have our ways of getting through the day (and night). Just as we also have interesting relationships with work. I am always compulsively busy - I have a lot going on - but I try to find three to four weeks a year where I cut ties to the outside world: no internet, no cellphone. I am about to have such a week in January, five months since my last holiday. I urgently need the downtime. But I am always fascinated by people’s relationship with that very modern notion of connectivity. I am an avid cross-country skiier. I have cross-country skiied in Norway, above the Arctic circle in Finland, in Switzerland, France, Austria, Quebec, the Canadian Rockies, the Italian Dolomites, Wyoming, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. But my preferred trail is by a lake called Emerald in Yoho National Park, British Columbia - not far (30k) from Lake Louise. It is a eight kilometer trail framed by the Rockies, and the first three kilometres bring you across the frozen surface of the lake. It is pantheism personified. And it is always free of people. If you see two or three other skiers during a peregrination of the trail it’s an event. But last year, as I came around a bend in a snow storm, I heard this very male voice shouting: “But that is unacceptable. As in: u-n-a-c-c-e-p-t-a-b-l-e. You get that, asshole?” Yes, he was having a business call on his cellphone by the frozen expanses of Emerald Lake. Welcome to paradise. Just as I saw so many people on the beaches along the Amalfi Coast last summer endlessly glued to phones. I would never legislate when it comes to telling someone what to do with their down time. What I do know for myself is: we are so within reach of each other, so completely connected to all the complexities and deitritus of our lives, that I need to find junctures in the calendar when I simply pull the plug and have seven days distance from it all. Can we ever truly turn off from our lives? It’s a dubious hope - but we can find respites from the pressures we all (in disparate forms) put ourselves under.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 17:53:35 +0000
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