Paradise Found!
Raise your hand if you’re sick of the word pandemic!
This annoying “plague” has been an awful, unprecedented event this century, and maybe even the last one, drawing the entire world to a momentary standstill.
Stores, shops, malls, museums, zoos and amusement parks have all been closed. Children can’t play on the playground so as not to pass on germs. You can’t go to the dentist for that much needed cleaning, or even hug your own grandmother!
Not to mention the airline flights, cruise ships and hotel rooms being cancelled, postponing that vacation or holiday trip you had planned for all year (even I postponed a highly anticipated sightseeing trip with my best friend).
All of this and more promises for a very dull and disappointing summer.
Still, we can sit and stew in our dismal miseries—OR we can get creative and turn those lemons (and limes) into summer lemonade. It’s time to rethink and readjust our idea of “getting away”, people!
For myself, I used the funds I earmarked for my trip into recreating a topical oasis on my patio deck—furniture, umbrella, plants, flowers, even a cascading water fountain. It was something I spoke of doing for several years. Now each morning or afternoon, I take my novel and escape to my Paradise Found and dive into a new adventure with my iced drink and warm snack and Mollie, my dog who loves to sit faithfully at my side.
I haven’t always had the space, funds and opportunity to create an entire patio oasis, however. But I still learned early on that you must always carve out some sort of personal space to escape, a refuge of sorts, no matter how large or small.
Maybe you have an entire room in your house that you can call your own away from the bustle of your busy family. Maybe it’s only a corner of the kitchen with a bistro table and your favorite fresh cut flowers. It could be a small secret fairy garden in the backyard, or a corner in the living room with your own table where you stash your favorite books and movies. It could even be the corner of your desk at work with a few special tokens and pictures to escape those pesky, pushing and pulling coworkers and bosses (for the moment anyway).
Your own person Eden could be anywhere, but it is there if you search for or create it.
Remember that you don’t have to fly across the country to visit relatives who stuff you onto a cot in their cramped, crowded living room, or spend your life’s savings at that amusement park with bad food for the day or week. A true vacation is merely a time and place away to decompress, to quiet yourself, take a breath, take a brownie! It’s a special oasis to “vacate” from the hassle of everyday work-a-life, even if it’s just for ten minutes.
So find your personal paradise wherever that may be. Then thumb your nose at this stupid pandemic that sought to ruin your happy place and destroy your renewed peace of mind.
Even if you do it from behind a surgical mask.
