Meditation: "On Vacation Every Moment?"

Fittingly, in the middle of my restful and rewarding spring vacation, I find myself pondering the meaning of the word “vacation”, hoping I can find some reasonable way to apply it to every day of the year, rather than just a few. Isn’t that what we all yearn for – a life that could be thought of as a perpetual vacation? We look forward yearningly to the next official break in our work year, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if each day of our lives was like a vacation? That would indeed be a dream come true – and it’s that dream that I’ve been considering during these two work-free weeks. As usual, my trusty dictionaries come to my assistance and inform me that the word derives from the Latin word meaning “empty” – as in “the vacant house”. These vacation days are empty of the demands of work, but, now that I think of it, isn’t each moment of my life “empty” in a certain special way? As I look ahead to the coming moment, I actually have no idea what it contains. To me, it might as well be entirely empty as I await its arrival. This leads me to another thought, one that helps me see how every moment can be thought of as a vacation. Each moment is empty – “vacant” – when it arrives, but when it does arrive, it suddenly becomes full to overflowing with power and significance. Indeed, it’s the only thing that counts – the present moment. What’s interesting is that I don’t make the moment full to overflowing. The moment does that itself – or perhaps I could say the universe does it. Every new moment in my life is loaded with significance for me, but some power other than me has already done the loading. All I have to do, in a sense, is relax and enjoy what’s been poured into each present moment. Here’s the point: There’s no work involved for me. All I have to do in each moment is be as alive and alert as possible, so that I can appreciate the power that it contains. That’s more like being on vacation than being at work – on vacation every moment.