Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you're juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 P.M. deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you're walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock.
Reading is a joy for my kids, and to swing in a hammock on a lazy summer day reading a good book just goes with summer.
We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.
I like to sit in my backyard. I go out on the hammock and sit in silence and kind of meditate. Nature is calming, and it's nice to go out there and clear my head.
I don't care who you are, the pressure is on to go to the next task immediately. What happened to the days of hanging out in the hammock all afternoon?
My perfect day is constantly changing. Right now, it would be to lie around in a hammock reading with a portable phone and a table of food next to it. I would spend all day there. And that's all that I can possibly come up with on the spur of the moment.
Of course we have compassion. We just don't believe the safety net should be used as a hammock.
I've never understood activity holidays since we seem to have far too much activity in our daily lives as it is. Find a culture where loafing is the order of the day and where they don't understand our need to be constantly doing things. Find somewhere you can have a hammock holiday.
I'm lucky to have a great support system in my friends and some of my family. If you have those people that you trust, go ahead and fall back into them and let them be your hammock and cocoon and let them embrace you.
My goal involves a hammock, a vegetable patch, and a solar-powered house. And I hope to eventually get there.