Daylight. I wake most mornings around 5:20—to a scheduled alarm on my cell phone, except for Sundays. The exception to prove the rule, as it were. This is the thing about rules, isn’t it? Remember Picasso saying we must know the rules before we can break them? Tricky, but it makes one think. Breaking rules on occasion (on occasion!) reminds us why we made the rule. Take the example above—I enjoy early morning—rule or not—so I set an alarm. If I’ve slept poorly, or am caught up in REM sleep when my eight hours is up, I’ll roll over after tapping off. A sleep-in on Sundays is being kind to myself and not subject to the wake-up call.
Back to “the exception proves the rule.” Let a kid get away with doing a stupid thing and he’ll likely learn why there’s a rule. Maybe, maybe not. Okay, Prenting 101. For us elders who have maybe learned, or never learned “the hard way,” rules may coalesce into “maybe a good idea.” As some refer to the Ten Commandments. As suggestions. But I speak of the fundamentals: the kindness rule, the manners rule, the “be decent” rule. When I break a “be decent” rule, I pay for it with emotional angst, self-loathing, and regret.
Vacations, either to visit loved ones or to travel to parts unknown or remembered (and the two experiences may intertwine) are designed to be exceptions to our personal Rule of Life. Constant vacationing would be unsustainable. The root of the word in Latin: vacare, means to be empty, free, or at leisure. In other words, we vacate our quotidian life. At least for a period of time. Last week we traveled to see our daughter and son-in-law. They live in the northwest, and we understood there would be rain. On the two clear days, we toured apple, pear, and lavender farms—a joyful and refreshing experience. It lent perspective on our own work as apple growers.
On another fine day we drove along the coast and wandered the beach and town of Manzanitas. Uncrowded as it was during the shoulder season, we delighted in unusual goods and creative clothing not found in my usual neck of the woods. The gift of seeing magnificent Douglas fir trees and creepy graveyard trees (as I call them), sauntering along the low-tide beach while watching our daughter’s dog cavorting was soul-filling. “Ordinary Time,” punctuated by High Feasts, minus useless suffering. My Rule of Life.
Braeburn Croft 