A Million Little Things

Over the winter, I started using the sauna at the gym after my workout. A moment of calm respite in dry heat. No one ever seems to use it but me. It is serene, quiet, with the muffled sounds of showers, women’s voices, footsteps, and the whir of an occasional blow dryer.

I try to clear my mind of its incessant chatter. A mini-meditation. As I sit there, eyes closed, palms up with middle fingers to thumbs, I hear the door open and two women enter. I open my eyes and find two women fully clothed coming into the sauna! I look at them and smile. One smiles back and says they like to warm up before their workout, coming in from the below freezing temperatures outside. (Note to self: not a bad idea on really cold days!)

Their chatter, at first a bit disruptive to my attempt at meditation, soon brings me drifting to far-off continents, with warm sands, djembe drums and a rhythm of time I haven’t experienced since the arrival of children. They were speaking French with an accent that spoke of spices and dancing, laughter and music. I was far away, the heat of the sauna impersonating the heat of distant lands.

One of the women left and after a moment of respectful silence the other and I began to talk. She said she was tired, having just finished her shift. It was early yet and I rightly guessed that she had just pulled a night shift. And now she was at the gym! Brave girl. Then she was going to a computer class. Then home to take care of her family. I shared my recent thoughts of how the seasons no longer carry the meaning they used to. We no longer use the seasons as nature had intended: winter, a time for going within, for meditation, for repairing and mending, for preparing for spring. Winter used to be a time of quiet. But winter now seems as frenetic as spring, and there is no respite. With technology allowing us to work and live 24/7, we no longer have an “excuse” to just stop, or at least slow down. She agreed that life is incredibly fast-paced. She said you’d have to leave Canada for a quieter country if you wanted a calmer life.

This was the irony. I had left France for a healthier lifestyle, a slower pace. And it is this very reason I came to Canada! Where people actually finished work at 5pm, and it was widely accepted that you had a life outside of the office. People here enjoyed outdoor activities, a physical lifestyle, and fresh air. There were four seasons, and it was here that I fell in love with winter. The quiet the snow brings. A hush outside with the muffled footsteps, warm lights burning in windows, the monochromatic landscapes through the city and country. A time to go inside, be with friends and family. Darn my socks (if I knew how to), cook hearty soups (that I can do), dream big dreams in preparation for spring.

That is my image, but my reality is far different. Old socks with holes get made into rags, I’m lucky if I get one hearty soup a month made (to be frozen in single servings for later), and every day is a mad dash that doesn’t seem to change from any other season except for the layers of clothing and amount of salt on the shoes.

There seems to be a constant rush of a million little things running through my head: lists of things to do, to buy, to fix, to schedule, to research, to choose from, questions to answer from my 4 year old, diapers to change from my one year old. And it never lets up. I can walk down my little stretch of hallway (about four steps), with a task in mind, get stopped twice mid-stride by each child, once by my husband, go on several detours, to find myself asking the age old question, “what was I doing again?”

And that thought seems to be lost in that intangible space-time continuum, floating there waiting for me to shuffle through my brain to catch it again, but more often than not, it is lost. Just like that shoe I was looking for... oh, wait! That was it! Ah... and there I go, looking for a lost shoe, or finding a place to stuff some toy that no one ever seems to know where to store, or to get the laundry, or fold it, or... yeah... you get it. Everyone gets it. Because no matter what your life situation, everyone seems to have gotten caught in the “million little things” that occupy our minds and bodies. Whether you’re four or ninety-four, with kids or single, working or retired, everyone seems just as busy.

The art of doing nothing really is a lost art. We used to have the winter months to practice it. Or the time of the “siesta” during the long hot days of summer. Now those rhythms have gone missing. We no longer stop and listen to them. To the heartbeat of the Earth, its pulse quickening and slowing down, like waves in the ocean. I wonder if it’s all those wireless radio waves that are filling our heads with ceaseless chatter. Can we learn to cut through it all and come back to the healing steady beats of nature? Can we learn to stop and be silent? Isn’t it in the pauses that we really hear the music? The silence in between sentences where we gain understanding.

I had gotten so lost in my “million little things” that it has taken me until the arrival of spring for me to write my musings of winter. I guess I have a whole year to practice my new-to-me yet old-as-time-itself art of doing nothing. The art of Being. Ah yes. That is it.

The art of Being.