My nerves are in tatters - anything might have happened and I would not have known. Would a few hours or days of not knowing that this thing had happened change how I would have felt about whatever this thing could have been? and if something momentuos had happened and I had been unaware, what would this have meant for me - would I have felt a tremour deep in my soul? It is unlikely that I would have felt anything other than I did.
Modern communications are wonderful, but when one begins to feel that they are necessary for peaceful living they give no peace at all. When staying connected becomes such a part of one's life that not being able to get online leads to mild panic, modern conveniences can become anything but convenient, and dependence upon them, unhealthy.
It is always good to get away from one's ordinary life, if only so that one appreciates it when one returns. In the case of this week away, I am delighted to wake every morning and to see out my window a scene that is quite different from the apartment block that I look into from my home in Dublin. Yes, I may be missing important events in the lives of the neighbours that I overlook (they too appear to be unemployed and I am sure that they have now witnessed as many happy times, evenings in front of the TV and arguments that have happened in my apartment as I have watched occur in theirs') but apart from that, I expect little to have changed when I return home tomorrow. However, even after spending just a few days in a different house, in a different country, my little apartment will feel different when I slouch into the couch tomorrow night and curl up next to my boyfriend - because I will be that little bit altered, that little bit changed.
My mother suggests that we should always embrace small changes and encourages us to swop places at the table rather than to establish fixed territories where we each eat when we eat together. I agree that change is a vital aspect of successful living. Not only do small changes keep us alive by ensuring that we do not loose completely the capacity to adapt that we have in childhood, also, by embracing small changes we may discover things that we enjoy that we may never otherwise have discovered.
Holidays are good opportunities to taste change because they allow us to immerse ourselves in a new place, full of different ways and mores, and then to jump right back out of that lifestyle, sometimes taking with us a flavour of this different land or different version of ourselves.
Being out of communication is one change that can at first seem difficult, or even stressful, but once we recognise that the world goes on without us and us without news from it, our lives are often more rich and our appreciation of what happens day to day around us, more real. At least, this is how I often feel after an extended break from the New York Times online and Guardian Unlimited, not to mention my beloved email.
Next week I'll be back to my daily blog (still searching for a way to return to the daily slog) but I will do so with the influence of a week away, a week that is sadly rain-soaked, but wonderfully relaxing, if only because for a few days I gave up the stresses of my 'normal' life and took on new ones!
My battery is about to die and as I am sitting in a busy area, using the free wifi in the supermarket, I will go and return to the hills, where I cannot get online and I am much the better for it - briefly.
Good entry Anna. A change is as good as a rest eh?!!
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