Find your Sunday

When I was little there was nothing to do on Sundays. Everything was closed. No shopping, no working. The movie theatre was open and that was about it. There was no internet and no DVDs, and the television had about 13 channels, one of which might be showing an old film if you were lucky.

So we read. We wrote letters. We visited people, or people visited us, or we just hung around the house.

I thought Sundays were so boring.

It took me a long time to understand what they had been for. Sunday was a debrief. A whole day when the world agreed to stop asking you for things. You recharged without knowing you were doing it, because there was nothing else on offer.

The quiet hours

I have never been able to sleep in. For years that meant I was the only one awake on a Sunday morning in a house that was loud the rest of the week, and I would not have traded the noise for anything. A loud house is a house with life moving through it.

But those few hours were mine. The paper, a coffee, everyone I loved asleep upstairs, and our dog Murray at my feet, pretending to keep me company while he waited for me to drop some food.

Nothing special ever happened on those mornings. That was what made them feel so indulgent.

How we lost it

Years ago I wrote that I had finally found Sunday again. I had spent a slow day with a book and was very pleased with myself. Then I noticed that I was writing about it on a computer, on a Sunday, after checking my email three times, watching something on channel 231 and running out to the grocery store.

For a minute there, it was Sunday.

That is how it goes now. Nothing closes, so nothing stops. If you want a Sunday you have to make one on purpose.

Making one

It does not need to be a whole day. A morning will do. Leave the phone in another room. Sit somewhere with a warm drink and do something that has no use at all.

It is also a good morning for the house. Open the doors and windows for a few minutes, even in the cold, and let the week's air out before the next one starts.

If you would like company, I put out a quiet hour of my own every Sunday at 7am Eastern: breath, a guided meditation, a few questions and a pen. It is called Sunday Mornings, it is free, and nobody minds if you watch it at noon.

From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.