Guilty Pleasures...

Yesterday I saw the movie Eat, Pray, Love with my girlfriend Molly.  It was a great story and I actually saw the movie before reading the book.  Usually, I insist upon reading any book before seeing it as a movie, but this time I thought I'd give it a go.  Besides a great performance by Julia Roberts, lovely scenery from her travels abroad and a mouthwatering showing of food, there was a line in the movie that quickly reminded me of a realization I came upon while on my honeymoon in France...

While "Liz" is spending time in Italy, she befriends some of the locals.  During one particular conversation at what appears to be a barber shop, her Italian friend states (and I'm not quoting here, but you'll get the gist)

"You Americans, you don't know how relax and enjoy simple, daily pleasures."

Again, I'm definitely not quoting here, but it does bring up a good point.  Do we really know how to relax?  And I mean really relax, as in being able to do NOTHING.  And enjoy it.  I know we've definitely mastered the fine art of sitting around and watching television, and I'm sure a few of us could argue that watching TV is doing nothing.  But I consider watching TV a "mindless" form of doing nothing.  How about mindfully doing nothing?  I know I definitely struggle with this one, especially after not working this summer.  I've always been a worker.  Which I think is a good thing, I have an impeccable work ethic.  But I really struggled with (at times) not actually "working" this summer.  Another emotion I noticed when I would spend a day in the middle of the week (gasp!), sleeping until 10:00 and then heading over to the pool with some girlfriends, is GUILT.  Now why in the world would I feel guilty for doing that?!?

I started to think of this during our time in France for our honeymoon.  I really enjoyed all of the things we were experiencing.  Drinking bottles of wine, eating amazing food and walking endlessly exploring a wonderful city.  But I never felt guilty then.  Why?  Because I was on my honeymoon!  I was supposed to be enjoying myself, right?  So why can't we enjoy ourselves ALL OF THE TIME!?!?!?  I think we really live in a society with all of this pressure to achieve, achieve, achieve and work, work, work.  And once we've achieved it's almost not enough.  It's as if we're waiting for a special feeling, something that will tell us, "It's okay, that's enough."  I once heard a great saying (not sure where), "Americans live to work, but Europeans work to live."  And I'm totally generalizing here, but this was definitely the theme I picked up on while spending two weeks in France.

I want to be good at doing nothing.  Okay, that sounded interesting.  I want to be good at doing nothing when there is nothing to be done.  I am very passionate about the work I am about to pursue, and I am excited to work very hard to achieve that goal.  But at the end of the day I want to sit and reflect.  I want to enjoy a mind-challenging conversation.  I want to drink an intriguing glass of wine.  I want to relish in a delicious plate of food.  And I want to look back and say, "I deserved that, I enjoyed that."  No guilt there.  We only get one trip in this crazy thing called life, and I certainly don't want to look back and the end of all this and say, "Well, I guess I worked a lot."

So tomorrow I'm going to sleep late, enjoy a lunch with friends and go pick out quilting fabric with my mother-in-law.  And I'm going to enjoy every single minute.