When I sat and talked to my day (part 12)

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Today, I want to digress to an interesting topic - importance of short vacation. After coming to Sweden and starting to get settled here, I decided to start this experiment. Instead of taking long summer breaks, I wanted to try out short bursts of days. It was 2011 I believe, the elder daughter was only 2 years old. She had started to go to the day care, and was speaking a word or two. I took some days off. Back in those days summer in Sweden was rather unpredictable. The weather had a digital choice - either sunny and warm or dark and rainy. The period was mostly between May end and August end.


 

I took some days off in May. I still remember one of my colleagues had told me, it was too early. But the good thing about this part of Europe was - it could shift its gears very quickly, from being dry, desolate, lifeless to full of colours, flowers and energy.

This particular shift of nature could be compared to a small child getting happy once the father would bring a toy, after he had a spell of cry and anger. In short, Scandinavia changes its persona in a way that affects all of us -

  • At the onset of summer, the mornings are mostly marked by soft and steady breeze. Ideally, there would have been a short spell of rain in the night before.
  • The greenery would be intact and the yellow flowers surrounding the landscape would be blooming with full vigour.
  • The houses would be tinged by the early ray of the morning sun. Sweden is arguably one of the best countries in the world to maintain and upkeep its heritage.
  • The overall gentleness in the weather and the air, mixed with an average temperature of around 24-25 degrees would make life beautiful. It would offer the right tinge of Vitamin D that we need to feel healthy. It would make the happy hormones even happier.
This trend of taking some days off in early summer continued for a few years thereafter. While going through some of my early posts from 2014, I came across the one below. This was a stroll by one of the loveliest areas of the locality in Malmö where I used to stay.

                                                          Blog on Malmö suburb

Cut to 2026, in the late half of the Swedish summer, I am again off for a few days. Going through the emotions and motions of mid age life, a break like this is not bad. 

  • It helps you to take a pause from the speed and rush of professional life. Perhaps, some stuff can be learnt newly, some topics can be more deeply checked, some can be simply let to go away.
  • It helps one to focus on mental aspects and some introspection into how to plan up life. Even though we should not ideally share our long term plans with people around us (at least books dealing with "crash course to success in life" talk about this), but it is not bad to explain those plans to one's own heart and mind. They might be at opposition to each other, but we can use this vacation pause to allow a good dialogue between the two!
  • If nothing, we could just take the time to relax. We could let the neurons and sensory nerves to calm down, nourish and flourish. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, there is still an abundance of Natural Stupidity in this world. We could just ignore the stupid things happening around us, allow them to just pass away without paying any attention. Instead we become more quieter version so that we could start to befriend the AI tools.
  • It is also a time to catch up with friends, old colleagues or classmates. Take a short coffee meet up or a lunch together. Take a group along, hear up stories from each other. Remember - human life is all about stories. We understand life through its stories.



Until the next time, bye everyone.




 

Location: Staffanstorp, Sverige

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