I was watching Thomas the Tank Engine yesterday. One of the conductors made the following observation.
“Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.”
True. A vacation is really a change – of place, of space, of your state of mind. I note that three weeks racing through Europe was surprisingly restful. Two weeks of devoted attention to my six year old grandson (sans the ‘rents) was joyful, invigorating. A few days on a beach is just plain…sigh…ahhhhh.
Some change is not restful.
Even though one week with my seriously ill daughter is a change of place and space and state of mind, even though this time involves very little physical activity outside the norm, it’s far, very far, distant planets far, from a rest. And if you suggested to my daughter that lying on the couch all day long listening to the click-click-click of the pump pushing “feed” through the tube in her stomach is a “change as good as a rest” – she’d toss you out the door with the power of a steely-eyed look that I’m told she learned from me.
My heart breaks to watch her watch her husband bustle off to work while she must stay home. What about her life, her job, her future.
Negative change is not restful…not by any stretch of the imagination.
Muse: ….
Me: I feel so alone.
Goose the Muse 