Our complex modern life, especially in our larger centers, gets us running so many times into grooves that we are prone to miss, and sometimes for long periods, the all-around, completer life.  We are led at times almost to forget that the stars come nightly to the sky, or even that there is a sky; that there are hedgerows and groves where the birds are always singing and where we can lie on our backs and watch the treetops swaying above us and the clouds floating by an hour or hours at a time; where one can live with his or her soul or, as Whitman has put it, where one can loaf and invite one's soul.

We need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life.  They are necessary for healthy, normal living.  We need occasionally to be away from our friends, our relatives, from the members of our immediate households.  Such changes are good for us; they are good for them.  We appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from them for a period, or they from us.

We need these changes occasionally in order to find new relations--this is a twofold sense.  By such changes there come to our minds more clearly the better qualities of those with whom we are in constant association; we lose sight of the little frictions and irritations that arise; we see how we can be more considerate, appreciative, kind.

We need these changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles--the cobwebs off our faces.  We need them to whet again the edge of appetite.  We need them to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers.  We need them in order to come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for the daily duties.  It is like the chopper working too long with axe underground.  There comes the time when an hour at the stone will give it such persuasive power that he can chop and cord in the day what he otherwise would in two or more, and with far greater ease and satisfaction.

We need periods of being by ourselves--alone.  Sometimes a fortnight or even a week will do wonders for one, unless he or she has drawn too heavily upon the account.  The simple custom, moreover, of taking an hour, or even a half hour, alone in the quiet, in the midst of the daily routine of life, would be the source of inestimable gain for countless numbers.