To Stand and Stare

“As far as I’m concerned, Covid is over,” someone in the barbershop declared. 

It’s true: we are reemerging, like moles crawling out of their homes in the ground, from a devastating pandemic. In a few weeks, the mask mandate in Kentucky will be lifted, but for many, it’s already a thing of the past. I can visualize pictures on Facebook in the not-so-distant future: “Remember when,” followed by photos of us wearing masks.

Everything has changed, and it’s still the same. I’m afraid it won’t take long to lose the lessons we learned during Covid about the preciousness of time, the importance of family, the fluidness of what we call the workplace, and the necessity of self-care. 

A little reminder came to me, just a ping, like the alarm on your phone after you’ve forgotten you’ve set it. 

We were visiting my son at their lake house on Norris Lake (Tennessee). David was doing the grilling; I was doing the standing and staring—in this instance, staring at the lake below. And I had a vague sense that something was not right, that sense of foreboding that sometimes accompanies leisure, moving behind me like a shadow that soon disappears as soon as I turn and confront it.

It’s that vague sense that something is out of sync if you aren’t active, that feeling that there is something inherently amiss if you take time to stand and stare. We are so wired for production and activity that when we stand still for no reason, we’re not sure it’s okay. For good and bad, Covid has made the workplace more flexible, meaning that I can and therefore should be involved in some activity at most any moment.

W.H. Davies wrote a beautiful poem entitled “Leisure,” written perhaps in 1911, the opening lines of which are: “What is this life if, full of care/We have no time to stand and stare?”

Work is good. God built it into the plan for us. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

But God never intended for us to work all the time. Leisure is healthy. It’s to our benefit to stand (or sit) and stare. 

This summer, as we carefully merge back into the normal lane of life, make it a goal to get going, get it done, and then make time to stand and stare. If you’re like me and carry that laptop with you to the front porch, close it, leave it on your desk, and sit and watch the grass grow or the traffic go by. The thoughts that matter may not come till later, but have confidence: they will.

Let me warn you, standing and staring isn’t easy. The temptation to do is always there. As author Marty Rubin said, “It takes a long time to learn how to do nothing.” 

If you need some motivation to close that laptop or shut your office door and walk away from it, consider this statistic: people who work 55+ hours a week have a 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, according to the World Health Organization. 

I continued to stand and stare at the lake while I breathed in the aroma of burgers grilling. Then as we all sat together on the porch to enjoy them, I didn’t hear my cell phone ding because I had deliberately left it inside, and I didn’t think about opening my laptop because I had turned it off. Smiling as I listened to the birds singing while we laughed our way through dinner, I had to agree with Mr. Davies: “A poor life this if, full of care/We have no time to stand and stare.”