THROUGH UNTRUE

It is currently the peak of summer, and many of us are daydreaming about the ideal vacation. We imagine ourselves waking up in the morning without the stress of work, or staying in bed longer without any guilt or regret.
For those who spend their daily lives in cramped, cluttered, and claustrophobic cubicles, vacation means unrestricted road trips to spacious resorts where they can stroll along the beach, fill their lungs with fresh air, eat and drink to their heart's content, and relish the joy of being free and alive.
Many people who were forced to stay home due to the pandemic view vacation as a form of “revenge.” They try to make up for every beautiful experience they missed out on. So, they take trips as often as they can, relishing the wicked delight of knowing that the rest of the world is still confined to their homes.
However, in our eagerness to make our vacation the perfect getaway, we spend many days planning, comparing prices and offers, haggling with resort operators to get the best deal, and cramming our schedules with as many activities as possible. Vacation becomes another form of work, another form of bondage. The escape route leads to the same prison.
My ideal vacation is being in school. Many people might snicker at me because the word “school” is understood as a place for the dry-as-dust enterprise called “study.” However, the Latin word “schola,” from which the English word “school” is derived, actually means leisure.
Leisure means freedom from the tyranny of work so we can embark on the ecstatic adventure of wonder and discovery.
Unfortunately, our hyperactive and work-obsessed culture idolizes the person who works day and night to achieve success. Workaholics have set contemporary standards of respectability. If a person is perceived as wasting his time on leisure, he is labeled lazy or a bum.
But if we stop to think about it, we may realize that we can cross the seas faster than fishes, and soar to the skies higher than birds because of leisure lovers who refused to be chained to the time-consuming labor required by swimming or jumping.
Leisure lovers discovered ways to achieve things with minimal energy expenditure. They invented the electric bulb we read by, the car that transports us to various places, the computer that provides us with information at the push of a button, and the washing machine that cleans our clothes while we watch our favorite TV show. Leisure is the source of creativity and innovation.
Leisure is such a good idea that God Himself incorporated it in creation. The Sabbath Day is God’s way of reminding us that work is not our destiny and leisure is a sacred part of life.
So, if we take a break this summer, let it be an authentic experience of leisure, an opportunity to wonder, to see everything as though it were our last, to swim instead of fish in the waters of life, to laze around without worrying about tomorrow, and squeeze joy, peace, and delight from every moment that we have. Only then will our vacation be truly liberating.