By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--May 18, 2023
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Let’s face it. The world looks like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. We don’t have to embellish daily events to be brought to such a conclusion. Whether one has been watching world events for a long time or only a few months, it surely looks like we’re circling the drain these days.
It’s important to stay informed but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by events beyond our control. Even when our outlook is rosy, we can feel weighed down by work, relationships, responsibilities, and arbitrary routines. When any kind of an opening occurs, or when our surroundings are closing in on us, it’s important to retreat a ways, pull up the drawbridge, and just enjoy some peace.
It isn’t necessary to go to a hermit castle or wander in a zigzag pattern deep into the swamp or a wilderness, although those are good destinations. Most of us can’t board the sailboat and head out to the South Seas or even to Lake Wobegon. The drawbridge can be the door to a room or the gate on the driveway. It can be a garage door or the gate into the pasture or the woods. It can be outside on the tool shed, or even just a quiet place in one’s mind. When the pressure’s on, it’s important to go there.
Here are a few ideas for those hermit moments when the drawbridge is up and no one is eyeing the water depth in the moat.
Avoid people who annoy you and stop worrying so much about what others think of you. What we think of ourselves is more important if we can plant both feet in reality.
Stop seeing someone who expects you to put on a show, then criticizes you for it. Let them provide their own entertainment for a change.
Make a grocery run and stock up on some essential supplies needed to make soup, comfort food, cold drinks in summer and hot drinks in winter.
Think about what you’d do if you were cut off in a storm or natural disaster, plan for some of those things, then practice them before a disaster arrives.
Boycott something by buying and using a different product. Woke companies would be a good place to start. Likewise, spread some spending money at a place that supports your values.
Do something your own way. Does someone in your family think you should keep the grass shorter? Let it get a foot tall and invite them over. Ask them what they think now, but make them look across the moat and peek through the portcullis. Leave the drawbridge up.
Delete something from your phone or laptop that aggravates you or is outdated. Nothing but doom and gloom from yourdailydisaster.com? Toss it. Is that woke news sources telling lies about the border invasion? Toss it.
Consider exercising a different part of the brain. Set up a moderately challenging jigsaw puzzle of 500 pieces or more on a table. Try to give it at least 30 minutes every day. It may attract people, so be prepared for actual interaction.
Resume some work on that craft or skilled task you used to take time for. Knitting or crocheting, carving, painting, making toys, or knot tying all can bring some escape and stimulation.
Detach from the rat race, even if only for a while. Crafts or repetitive tasks can help clear the air and the cobwebs. Meditate on a topic or on nature. Watch grass grow. Stand by while paint dries. On a warm evening, listen to corn creak as it grows. Sail with the imagination over waves of wheat or on the ripples of a pond. Hear the wind in the pines. Calculate just how far you can see out across the Atlantic to the watery horizon.
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Music is an underutilized resource. It’s powerful in different ways on different days. Collect and bookmark some favorites or make up your own playlist. You could even look back on some of the Musical Perfection columns here on Canada Free Press. Bring out a favorite old album and listen to it with headphones and perhaps without images. Remember what we did for love. Turn off the lights. Close your eyes and note the scenes that begin to play from your memory. There are many magical places to visit that way.
Read a classic book. There are endless choices, but some books will come almost as close to being there as any life experience. In A Farewell To Arms, visit a dusty road in Italy or the bunker where Lt. Henry goes to shelter from an attack. See the chalet in the Swiss Alps where he and Catherine escape from the war. Hear his response when she asks him if he wants to go skiing while she’s in her confinement.
In another book there’s Francisco D’Anconia’s speech about money, and John Galt’s dramatic address to the nation as the economy crashes and the producers have gone on strike. They’re both unforgettable.
Fly with the 100th Bomb Group to Schweinfurt or stand on the fantail of a destroyer as the kamikazes approach in waves at Okinawa.
Sail with the Swiss family Robinson in Johann Wyss’s great adventure book and keep an eye out for Malay pirates.
Jot some notes about memorable occasions in your family’s history, or in your own. Tell the story of shutting down the big shot high school rival in your ’65 Dodge Coronet 500, in spite of his 138 c.i.d. advantage. There was the bored-out ’57 Chevy with the posi-trac rear end that would lift the front wheels off the ground a little when the light turned green. Remember when you caught all the fish but your grandfather caught none? Did you ever make breakfast for your mother on Mother’s Day? Tell a story you’d like someone to remember. Tell of your strength or the strength of others. Tell of the struggle to get by. Tell of the bobolink’s nest in the old fence post that last summer at the farm. It will take you right back there
If you’re zeroed in on self-preservation, having these retreats and drawbridge raisings built into a schedule can be life savers. Mark it on the calendar so it can be anticipated. Drudgery with no end in sight is no one’s idea of a good time, and it isn’t good for us. If we know when it will end or pause, even for a little while, there can be much reduction in our despair.
Call it a mental health day if it helps, but we all need to shrug a little now and then. It’s time to pull up the drawbridge.
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Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.