What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
I think I may have said all the necessary prologue to this one in an earlier blog. You can find it here:
A celebrant of the holy days of retirement. Some thoughts about the fate of ritual in a world defined by scheduled work.
In brief, that blog says that being retired must mean a re-evaluation of holidays. But then holy days are built to be re- evaluated as is what is of value for you and the world you know shifts. Once we valued the ‘holy’ more than the mundane, even when the latter is also rewarding in one way or another. Religions rarely hold on to being the definition of the reserved parts of life in modern capiralist economies.
People claim that they like to differentiate what they like to think of as their true interests when away from work schedules largely imposed on them by external factors. Sometimes, these factors are people, like your ‘bosses’. But even those who ad their own ‘boss’ at work, often have in that role a severe view of the inadequacy of theid working aelf unless brought to conform to the needs of their business rather than their wishes. nd defend that idea aa a measure of theid worth these days. That might explain why holidays aren’t restful but strenuous in a challenging way for some, involving travel that is arduous or a risky, difficult undertaking (climbing a mountain, for instance).
These days, I value not holidays taken over a week but just getting out of a limited routine: going to the theatre or an art exhibitions. But even then I feel I must learn – doing that by preparing myself and reading up on the subject of the exhibition or the play I am seeing, and then writing these blogs on reflections that come up after seeing them. A friend said to me that I must work harder trying to find education for myself in a supposed leisure activity than I did when I worked. Perhaps so, though I approached work in a way that was analogous. It was a way that rarely made it possible to cut off on holiday
So that’s the answer.
With all my love
Steven xxxxx
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