Disruptions in Rhythm
I have spent every summer of my life at a family cottage in Michigan. Before me, my mom spent her summers in the same summer community of cottages nestled along the shore of Lake Michigan and before her, my grandpa came. It’s in our blood, coming to this community in the summer months. It’s what we do. And yet, I know for many people I try to explain this tradition to, it can be hard to understand.
“You leave California and go to Michigan?”
“You just pick up and leave your normal life for 8 weeks?”
Questions like these are common and remind me that what feels as necessary as breathing is anything but to most observers of my life.
It is a type of exodus when I pack up our families things for the summer and we start the journey to the midwest. We are in fact making a choice to leave one place and enter another. We are summer nomads.
But why I write today is to share the power of disrupting the normal rhythm of life. Because that is what I do every summer, I disrupt the rhythm of my life. It makes me laugh a bit when I see it like that, because I am the definition of routine. I love a schedule and resist the concept of change that is out of my control. Maybe if I hadn’t been doing this since birth I’d struggle more with it, but the gift is that as time goes by I recognize the power that change has to offer. The power of stepping outside of the normal routine.
What are the rhythms in your life? What are the things you do daily—good or bad? Maybe it’s time to take inventory of how you are moving throughout your day and see what you could benefit from disrupting. Is there a smaller exodus from routine that you could take this summer?
It is a gift that I am able to place one life on pause and I enter another each summer. I don’t overlook that. Maybe this gift is waiting for you in a way that is unique for you. Summer usually brings some form of change for most of us. Kids out of school. Vacation. Family visiting. There are many things in summer that disrupt our year round rhythm. How can you look to embrace these disruptions as an offering for new perspective?
