So there I was–no phone, no car, no keys, no purse, nothing. It wasn’t exactly by accident. It’s just that I had emerged from a licensing test (long story for another day) where you could not have anything on you, not one thing.(Well, clothes of course. But not much else.) And I’d come out of the test center 20 minutes early. After one teeny, tiny moment of confusion and feeling kind of naked, I felt surge of delight.

Certainly, it helped that I passed the test. But what really fueled my glee was the wonderful sense of freedom resulting from my unconnectedness. The day was mild. There was a place to sit and a bathroom back in the test center if I needed it. For 20 minutes I walked around the outside of the building, situated near a main road and bookended by strip malls, and celebrated just being. I watched the two crossing guards, pondered the source of the cobblestones that took the place of a lawn, and was grateful for the combination of detachment (no tech) and security (I was alive and well and my ride would soon show up).

My health requires staying centered, soul-connected and in tune with my body and the world around me. And I certainly do my best to build quiet time into each and every day. But I do well to also enhance those practices by embracing serendipitous moments of retreat. I could have fretted that I didn’t plan better. I could have paced, anxiously willing my ride to know I was finished early. Many times that’d be my way of responding. Instead I embraced a way to just my self and my circumstances be.

Not a bad 20 minutes work! Here’s hoping that  the little bit will be the seed of more serenity more of the time. After all, I can unplug by choice as well as happenstance, right?