Way back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, there was a restaurant called Cucina! Cucina! ‘down the hill’ in Issaquah. (A quick Google search reveals that it closed in 2013). Brad and I had three young children, and he was still traveling a lot with MDA. But when Brad was in town, he made a point of giving me Thursday nights off – to do with what I pleased. I can’t remember if it started out with dinner and a movie with a friend, but I know it quickly evolved into me sitting alone at Cucina! Cucina! with a glass of wine, a Caesar salad, and a notebook. That was such a treasured time for me. Despite the bustle whirling around the restaurant, a quietness surrounded me. Within that notebook, I dreamed and planned. I made Christmas lists – for gifts, activities, and sending cards. I planned Thanksgiving dinner – down to selecting recipes, making shopping lists, and designing the table presentations. I outlined New Year’s resolutions. I planned vacations – including an epic drive to Iowa for my niece’s wedding. I meditated on bible verses. I wrote notes to friends. I wrote notes to myself.
As I re-read Suleika Jaouad’s blog from last November, I was taken back to those evenings at Cucina! Cucina! The blog is entitled, “In Praise of Boredom,” but it is more so the lack of busyness that attracts me. Lines I’m drawn to:
- It was in that stillness and silence that I first discovered and began to cultivate my interior life.
- Recently, I’ve been thinking about how relentlessly busy we are.
- So as an antidote to the torrential busyness, I’ve been trying to cultivate stillness and quiet each morning.
- These hours feel mystical and sacred, and I try to meet the stillness with my undivided attention, to listen for what arises in the silence.
Although I can regurgitate all that I accomplished while sitting at Cucina! Cucina!, it is not the accomplishments that resonate with me after all these years. It’s the moments to sit quietly and just think, to allow myself space and time to let ideas flow and contemplate how I might weave them together. How rarely I take the time to do that now! I could easily pride myself on being a task-master. But what I earnestly crave is a moment to be silent – even in the middle of a busy restaurant. I think because I don’t have a husband and three young kids demanding my time, I have not felt the need to carve a space of silence. My time is my own, and yet I fill it with busyness instead of the silence I crave.
My brother will tell you that he often finds me in silence (I am staying with him at the moment as Brad and I relocate to Houston). But that silence is not really silence. It’s work of some sort – sorting emails, working on my consulting business tasks, learning how to do digital advertising more efficiently, or educating myself on the latest college trends and high school opportunities. Busyness.
There were times when I was planning for Patch405 that I would say bordered on that perfect space … what shall I call it, Cucina! Cucina!-land? Patch405 was part dream world, part education. Exploration that turned into implementation. Dreams that eventually worked themselves into reality. Perhaps the work just took longer than the dreaming?
So, if my time is my own, there should be no excuses as to why I can’t have the time/space I crave. I know what to do with it once I have it. But what does that time/space look like now? How do I create it? How do I protect it as sacred? How do I be intentional?
Patch405 