A Ten Month Vacation

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a ten month vacation? Well, that’s exactly what I’ve just enjoyed. Except it didn’t involve any traveling. No airline miles, no long periods of time in the car, no expensive hotel stays. Yet it’s given me more joy than any of those things could’ve.

Shortly after the election last year, I decided to take a vacation from the media. Following a particularly vicious campaign season, complete with accusations of Russian collusion, tampered servers, white on black violence, black on white violence, black on brown violence, white on brown violence, brown on white violence, purple on orange violence, I’d had enough. So I turned off the television, put down the newspaper, stopped reading the opinion pieces and ceased engaging friends about current events.

And I just lived. Rather than focusing on what a bunch of Washington bureaucrats were doing, I focused on what my wife was doing. Rather than trying to intervene in the debates and squabbles of paid pundits, I intervened into the debates and squabbles of my three children. I talked with neighbors, friends, co-workers, not about national news, but about their lives, their passions, their day-to-day wishes and concerns, the things that were important to them and made them tick.

And I’ve never been more content. Without the outside noise, my mind has been clear. Clear enough to publish a book, read some of the classics, ponder God and my religion. I haven’t disregarded my politics entirely, but I’ve been free to really contemplate them, thinking my viewpoints through without the external influences of before. With all this clarity to ponder on my own, I’ve found that my values haven’t changed, they’ve just been enriched. I don’t feel uninformed, I feel wiser. Sure, I’m still aware of what’s going on. I don’t live under a rock. I catch the general narrative about North Korea and healthcare and guys kneeling instead of standing. But I don’t engage it. I don’t get wrapped up in every detail, every nuance, as I did before. Because it’s designed to pull you in deeper, deeper into a circle of misery. It’s designed to bring your focus only to the negative, only to the divisive. And without the media’s influence, I’ve been able to see through that lie, to see the good in people once again.

Yesterday I had an experience that perfectly illustrated what I mean. I was driving in Aurora, down a small neighborhood side street. As I approached the corner, there were about thirty geese camped out in the front yard of a home on my left. An SUV turned the corner, heading my way, and must’ve startled the geese because they all took off as one. But they didn’t fly away from us as they normally do. Instead they flew right at our vehicles, which were now only a couple of feet apart, pointed in opposite directions. With my windows down, I could hear the flapping of their wings as they barely cleared our windshields. I could almost reach out and touch these magnificent creatures as they lifted above us in flight, so close to one another that they partially blocked out the sky.

When I looked up at the girl in the opposing vehicle, I could tell she sensed the beauty of the moment too. But it went beyond that. It was almost comedic, and she smiled and I smiled back, both gripped by the absurdity of the situation. Here we were sitting in these huge steel contraptions, foreign objects in a goose’s world. We were intruding into their moment, forcing them to relocate elsewhere, when maybe we should’ve been the ones flying away.

She rolled down her window. She was Hispanic, maybe in her early 20’s. She spoke broken English, but English all the same. “That was a close one!” she shouted. “They almost got you!” I returned. We talked for another minute, both reveling in the spectacle of what we’d just seen, yet too human to discuss it in depth. She’d been the highlight of my day, and I could tell that I’d been the highlight of hers. That made me smile all the more.

As I pulled away, I was reminded of my ten month vacation. According to the media, that conversation wasn’t supposed to happen. That connection we shared was an impossibility. Me, a middle-aged conservative American-born white male, sharing such a moment with a young, Hispanic, immigrant woman - it didn’t fit into the media’s narrative. Yet it was a perfect example of what we actually are as a culture.

I enjoy encounters such as these several times a week, sometimes multiple times in a day. They are shared with people of both sexes, all races, all religions, affiliations and orientations. Yet according to the media, they shouldn’t be. The media’s distorted view tells us that we cannot get along, that there is more division and anger than is actually true. And as a culture, we fall for it. Not because we are naïve or foolish, but because they’ve clouded our opinions and our worldviews. They’ve overwhelmed our senses with their 24-hour cycle. But if you turn off the media, even for a week or two, if you decide to take a vacation as I did, you’ll start to see it too. You’ll start to see the compassion and decency Americans have for one another. You’ll remember all that makes us great. And you won’t be missing out on anything but “news.”

I think I’ll extend my vacation for a little while longer. It’s just been too sunny and warm. And quite possibly, I may never return.