[Itinerary Page]The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Beaune
It is hard to believe that tonight is New Year's Eve. Time do fly when you're having fun ... and it seems to go faster the older I get.
Remember how time would drag when we were kids? When we figured our ages in fractions? Ask a pre-schooler how old they are and you are likely to get an answer like "five-and-three-quarters." We were always trying to speed up time -- in a hurry to get to the next birthday, in a hurry to get to the next milestone (our teens, driver's license, high school graduation). The list -- and endless procession of minor passages -- goes on and on.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young ... but I think many of those adolescent ways of thinking stay with us into adulthood. So we race to the next milestone so we can hurry to the one after that, often missing the sheer pleasure of the trip in-between.
Gandhi is reputed to have said, "There is more to life than just increasing its pace." (If he didn't actually say that, I'm sure he wouldn't have argued with the sentiment). At some level, all we workaholics know that the more we get speeded up, the harder it is to shift gears and slow down to the speed of life.
When we go on "vacation" it is easy to carry that pace with us. Got to go here, got to see that, can't waste a day. Rush, rush, rush. No wonder the Europeans find us amusing. We probably look like hamsters running on a wheel.
By that measure, it may look like we are wasting our trip if we spend hours relaxing with a book or make dinner a picnic of bread, wine and cheese on the couch instead of going out to another restaurant. When I catch myself thinking that we should be out DOING something, I have to remind myself that I am ALWAYS doing something, even if that something is only learning to enjoy the simplicity of just BEING.
The Italians call it Dolce Far Niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. Write it down and repeat as necessary.
So today, about all we did was drive down the road to the big town of Beaune, heart of the Burgundy wine region, and have lunch. Well, that wasn't QUITE all we did. I suppose discovering the best quiche of my life in a Nolay boulangerie this morning should count for something, too.
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