Resting with Eighteen Million People

The first day of the break played out exactly as it needed to — which is to say, it involved just the right amount of not very much at all.

The highlight, if a single thing can be named, was breakfast.

For the past year, breakfast has looked largely the same every morning — a seven-day rotation of noodles, always accompanied by two boiled eggs and two bread rolls. I use the term bread rolls generously. The locals would call them that. To me, they have always felt more like small, well-intentioned bricks of flour that do the job without ever inspiring any particular enthusiasm. You eat them. You are grateful. You do not join a queue for them.

Shenzhen is a city of eighteen million people. Which means choice — real choice, the kind that requires a moment to actually consider rather than simply accepting whatever is in front of you. So this morning, in the company of a good friend, I sat down and ordered eggs Benedict and pancakes, and I will not pretend it was anything other than quietly magnificent. So quietly magnificent, in fact, that I am already planning to do exactly the same thing tomorrow.

The rest of the day was spent deep in conversation with a close friend — the kind that covers nothing in particular and everything that matters, that wanders without direction and somehow always arrives somewhere worth being. Easy, unhurried, generous with its time.

Kung Fu and Tai Chi were nowhere near my mind today. And that, in itself, felt like a gift.

It was the rest I needed. The rest I wanted. The rest that, after the months that have just passed, I think I had genuinely earned.