Reflections from the Recovery Bench
“The times are urgent, let us slow down.”
Bayo Akomolafe
On the 10th of December, I turned off my phone and placed it in a cupboard. For the next ten days, it rested there while I slowly acclimatised to the quiet. Being offline is one thing; not carrying a physical device at all feels entirely different. Time dissolved. It no longer structured or dictated my days.
Without pressure or demand, my body sank into deeper layers of fatigue. Instead of resisting it, I honoured it. I slept. I read. I cooked (which isn’t my usual forte), I painted and sketched. I meandered. When I left the house without my phone, it felt unexpectedly liberating.
Most days, I took a notebook and two pencils to a small park near my home. At the end of a path sits a pink bench overlooking the Johannesburg skyline, completely surrounded by green, almost forest-like. I would sit there and simply be. Sometimes I sketched. Often, I just sat and thought.
On one Saturday morning, a woman and her two young grandsons, dressed head to toe in Springbok rugby outfits, wandered down the path toward me. We began chatting, and she shared that after her son’s accident, he would come to this spot and sit on the bench. They had named it the recovery bench. From that moment on, it became mine too.
I believe that stepping offline, whether for a few hours or a few days, offers a profound invitation to slow down. It can sound unrealistic, even radical, in the world we live in. Yet I return often to Bayo Akomolafe’s words: the times are urgent, let us slow down. To slow down long enough to notice what returns.
Space with myself can feel indulgent, but it allows me to remember, to play, to create, to notice, to process, and to rest.
Seated on the recovery bench, I was reminded that when the world feels chaotic, returning to wild places and creating, matters.
Three questions I reflected on while sitting on the recovery bench…
- What conversations do I need to have?
- What do I need to say no to?
- Who do I want to spend time with and be inspired by?
If you would like to share your own creative musings or meanderings, I would love to see them.
You are welcome to email them to me at julie@theinventure.com
