Yesterday morning I woke up to find about two feet of snow covering everything in sight. Pittsburgh, blanketed in snow, was a completely different place than I had experienced before.
I started the morning on a mission to get four quarters so I could do some laundry. I left my building in the morning and started up the hill to find a cafe, or some store that would be open. It was still early, maybe 8 a.m. As I walked up the street, there wasn’t a moving car in sight. They were all buried. People were walking up the middle of the street to avoid trudging through the snow. It was beautiful.
As I made my way up the street, I thought about how the world must have been quite different 50 years ago, let alone 100 years ago. It led me to an idea: Spend a day being old-fashioned.
What does a person have to do to have an “Old-Fashioned” Day?
- Cook a meal
- Go for a walk
- Window shop your neighborhood
- Avoid the TV
The meal doesn’t have to be the greatest thing in the world. Just look in your kitchen cupboards and find what available ingredients you have. Make a nice, simple meal, enjoy it with a few close friends, or just on your own.
Wander around side streets in your neighborhood. Don’t drive anywhere to take a walk, just go outside and start your trek. Be observant; I, for instance, noticed a piece of a tree that had grown around a telephone line. The tree has since been removed, but a small piece of branch remains forever attached to the line. What can you find?
There are many stores along the main commercial stretch in my neighborhood. I haven’t been in most of the stores. I could peer in through the window and mentally bookmark the interesting places that I ought to visit. Given the weather, most stores are closed so I can’t go it, but that is no deterrent to window-shopping.
What better way to avoid the waste of time that television can be than to pretend it doesn’t exist for a day. Fill the time with some other form of entertainment. Write down your favorite life-anecdote and share it with a friend. Chances are you have amazing stories that will be lost if you don’t record them.
The most important part of being old-fashioned is to just not force anything. Read a newspaper, or a book. The list above is not meant to be complete, or even representative of what you should do. The main point is that you should just slow down, and enjoy being present.
