Look! Sheep!

We all get so wrapped up in our own worlds and expectations. Our daily routines, whether they take us to work and back or in circles around own home, are sometimes just attempts to find something to do so we can go to bed at night without that guilty knot in our stomachs from having wasted yet another day. Self help books and well minded friends tell us to live in the moment, to take tame for ourselves, but at the same time, for me at least, there's this list of puritan inspired phrases that roll down the screen in the back of my head like the credits from a movie that will never end. Idle hands make idle minds. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. God helps those who help themselves.

I'm not too terribly religious but I can't help but feel its weight upon me. Lessons preached from the pulpit somehow echo in almost all of our minds whether we make it to church on Sundays or not. Yet I'm pretty sure that the religious rules that govern our psyche were not written from behind the altar; they are currents of conduct that the church assumes as their own to keep their lambs of God closer to the chapel and, of course, more generous with their offerings even though, no matter how hard we try, writing a check or stuffing an envelope with a few dollars is only painting lipstick on the pig that is our guilt.

No matter how hard I try, I can't shake that guilt. Granted, it has worked for me for all these years and certainly pays off for others whom I can help along the way. I enjoy a great job, live in a cute little house, and have a pretty healthy dose of education and culture to back me up. But being thousands of miles away from my real routine, thousands of miles away from paying bills and shoveling my sidewalk, I have much more free time to make those circles around my temporary home and even though I know that I am still pretty much on top of my game, that I am fulfilling my responsibilities to my job, my friends, and myself, I still have this echo of guilt that stabs me in the back whenever I choose to sleep in for another half hour or whenever I watch a mindless hour or two of Simpsons in French while playing online games and sipping cups of decaf fruit tea.

Eventually, at least for me, that guilt starts to build up and cloud my vision. I know it's there and so I resent it more than taxes. Maybe that's not true; I'm actually happy to pay my taxes, even when I get ticketed for not shoveling my sidewalk to a three foot width and later have to step through a mound of snow to gain access to the cross walk and shuffle on the ice in front of city hall to pay that ticket. But I do resent that guilt as it stifles me and hides my smile because I feel bad about not being even more productive, plain and simple.

Why do I feel bad about taking a week's vacation in the south of France? Don't I deserve it? Of course I do. But I can't just up and leave! So I drag my work with me, line up my emails to write, and gather all the numbers of anyone I may need to call. The French have no problem taking vacations and I'm almost jealous of that freedom. From the get-out-of-my-way-I-got-work-to-do American point of view, it may seem excessive, their at least four or five weeks a year. It may seem excessive that they can easily close their computer at the end of the day and head home with no manila folders in tow, no emails to answer, and no intention to even think about work for the next sixteen hours at least. That's not excessive, that's the goal.

But I felt bad all along as I planned this week. I procrastinated, waiting until almost the last minute to buy my tickets and make my final arrangements. But I got up this morning and in an hour's time, I hurried through my routine plus managed to also pack my bag, print my maps and itineraries, stop at the store to get a few goodies for the journey, and make my train with still plenty of time to spare. So did I really procrastinate? Or just plan on doing things in their own time?

Regardless, there I was on board, sitting in my seat, gliding along backwards, backwards because the luck of the draw gave me a seat facing where we were, and not where we were going. The landscapes then creep up on you, almost taking away your choice of view and, like in a movie, only offer you the scenes as they present themselves one after another. There's no anticipating what's coming up. The backs of warehouses and reconstruction era office buildings, the spaces between homes and buildings gradually becoming larger and larger until you get mostly green fields with electric lines and, off on the horizon, crowded groupings of homes centered around a church and sometimes in the shadows of modest château on the hill. The guy facing me -- early sixties, yellow pullover, and sensible wire rimmed glasses – was taking up way too much space. He barely seemed to realize, or care, that I was there and we were to be seat partners for the next few hours. The entire train car was stuffed any of the same sorts, French lambs of God, everyone as polite as they are supposed to be yet maintaining that serious French look on their faces that they tend to put on when out in public. If only they had been circus clowns, or massage therapists, or Zen masters, I would have been reminded that I'm on vacation, headed for fun in the sun. Instead, I was taking on that very same serious – but polite – look on my face.

Staring out the window as the lunch trolley rolled by, green pastures fading off one after another into the distance in front of me, all of the sudden I was practically startled but white fluffy dots only about a hundred meters away.

"Look! Sheep!"

Sounds silly, but somehow that's what I wanted to exclaim. That's what we say, 'we' being those of us who did not grow up on farms, or in Europe. It's funny how in a split second, we can right our minds and center our attention on what's real in life. In a split second, I was reminded of the countless times during our weeklong stay in Ireland a few years ago we exclaimed "Look! Sheep!" Here, the 'we' being a group of adventure seeking Americans and two Brits not afraid to set up camp in a small little town, or more precisely, front and center at its most popular bar. It was a week without worries, a time to regroup, a time to find the humor in what we normally can't even see in the midst of our regular routine. And here we go again.

There's a house about 22 kilometers east of Avignon and a town of just a few hundred people that don't know what's coming. Almost the same group of Americans and their two Brits are switching their pints and Jameson for dry rosé and cheese after the main course. They are all hard working, fun loving, caring people who deserve a break, a day in the sun, and more careless days to admire the puffy rows of lavender and to watch fields of sunflowers first hit us with their blanket of yellow, then watch rows of them seem to turn to us, one by one, then quickly domino along into the distance. I don't think there are too many sheep farmers in southern France but you can be sure that I won't let a field of flowers go by without my noticing.