Q: The stress my family is feeling these days is almost unbearable.
Do we vaccinate our kids or not? Send them to school or not? Upgrade our own vaccinations? How many times? Visit those neighbours down the road who are wanting to celebrate their 50th anniversary? Visit my wife’s mother in her long-term care facility? Attend the crop show the seed companies are sponsoring? With the risk of another drought, what should we plant this year?
There is too much. What we can do?
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A: Your letter reminds me of the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Life is very much out of control. It is stressful, sacrificing, cruel and demanding and with little or nothing in return. We cannot duck our responsibilities. We must be in touch with the latest on the COVID crisis, we have to be up on the various weather peculiarities that are clearly universal and we have to be aware of the whole economic structure just to make sure that the food supply chain is working and we can expect to get some fresh vegetables.
The whole thing is stressful and I fear that these stressful moments are having serious effects on all of us.
Given that we can do little to challenge what is stressing us, the question is what can we do? The answer is simple. Most of us need to take a vacation.
So how do we do that? We cannot fly anywhere. Our airports seem to be rest havens for the virus, our highways are stopping points for just about any aberration in the weather and even if we did somehow manage to get somewhere calm and relaxing, chances are good that the staff working there would start phoning in sick as the virus’s way to reduce the services available and make the holiday more of a nightmare than a peaceful haven. So be it.
The vacation about which I am referring is not an actual vacation. It is called a mental vacation. If you want to get romantic about it you could even call it a fantasy vacation.
It amounts to a timeout from the regular bustle and routine that makes up your day. This is a sidestep from reality.
For a scheduled time of about an hour and for sure no longer than two hours daily, your TVs, computers and cellphones are turned off, and anything that looks like responsibility is stacked on the “to-do” list on your desk. That hour is your time.
You can meditate, go for walks, nap, build model airplanes, knit, sew, crochet, stare at absolutely nothing or whatever it is that you can do that lets you recharge those batteries.
Oh, and when you are having your mental vacation, you cannot drink or do whatever it is you do with marijuana.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
