The Problem With Doing Things Differently

My girls don’t usually work on Sundays, but they help out if they’re needed.

“If there were no Sunday trading, you wouldn’t have to work,” I observe.

Many people yearn for a slower time when shops closed at midday on Saturdays, wanting a proper break before the busyness of the next week.

“What if we lived the life we yearn to have?” I asked my husband, Andy. “Just because the shops are open on Sundays doesn’t mean we have to use them.” So, we stop shopping on Sundays. But we continue to visit cafes for breakfast after Sunday Mass.

One day, an inconvenient thought occurs to me: the cafe staff have to work if we want our post-Mass coffee.

“What if we stopped going to cafes on Sundays?” I ask Andy. “We could have a Sunday breakfast picnic instead.”

So, every Sunday, I pack a picnic, which we eat after Mass. We sit at a table with our backs to the almost-winter sun, watching the kangaroos and listening to the birds. Our picnic breakfasts are much better than the cafe ones we used to enjoy.

But changing our Sunday breakfast habit causes a problem. “What if someone invites us to have breakfast with them in a cafe?” I ask.

Would we say, “We don’t go to cafes on Sundays”, implying our friends are doing something wrong, something we disagree with? Or would we accept the invitation, deciding it’s better to appear friendly than stick to our desire to do what we think is right?

“We could invite people to join us for a Sunday picnic,” I suggest.

Doing things differently from others can be difficult. If we choose to unschool because we believe this is right, are we implying that our non-unschooling friends are wrong? But maybe unschooling isn’t right for everyone, because, of course, we are all free to make our decisions about what suits our individual families.

We could accept each other’s decisions, but that doesn’t mean we can’t share our unschooling life. What if we invited our friends to a mid-week picnic? Would they join us? Or would they say with genuine regret, “I’m sorry, we have to work”?

Would we explain that learning doesn’t need to look like work? It happens all the time, even at picnic tables on Sunday mornings, while we’re soaking up the almost-winter sun.