Having all the time in the world

For several years, my husband and I enjoyed owning a cabin in the woods, just a few hours from our home. We owned it with another family, and made frequent visits all together to enjoy a slower pace of life during all seasons – in summer we’d make a couple of weeklong trips, and in the winter we’d head up for 3-day weekends to enjoy the snow sometimes every other week.

When we went to the cabin, we noticed that once we plopped ourselves down there, we were very happy just being there. We rarely left to go out to eat, preferred doing walks or small hikes directly from the cabin rather than driving to a more adventurous hike that we had to reach by car, we didn’t even make the 10-minute drive to the picturesque lake very often. We just enjoyed being.

It taught us all, in the midst of this fast-paced world, how enjoyable it was to just *be*. We’d bring crafts for the kids, had a spa installed where we could entertain them for hours while we sat and looked at the forest and view. Yes, it was quite perfect.

We no longer own the cabin — a complicated set of financial and geographical changes meant that it was time for us to sell it — but it taught me a lot about how to take the feeling of the cabin into my everyday.

The most important thing I learned was the importance of slowing down… not on weekends away but all the time. I realized what I loved most about being at the cabin was the feeling that “I had all the time in the world.” This feeling alone is the root of me feeling inspired, in control, awake, alive, and appreciative. The opposite of this feeling is the one we are all most familiar with: the feeling of being rushed, hurried and having no time to fit things in.

So how can we get more of this feeling of having all the time in the world?