I’ve noticed that when I’m overcome by political angst or overwhelmed by life, I have the same instinct: I want to get in my bed. There’s something so comforting about it. The world can be chaotic, the news unbearable, and there we are, tucked beneath the covers, temporarily excused from all of it.

Isn’t this one of the great luxuries of modern life? We’ve created bedrooms so exquisitely comfortable and inviting that they can become little sanctuaries from the world. Yes, as I age, I find myself thinking differently about that impulse.

When life becomes difficult, our first animal instinct can be to hide. We retreat from the things that frighten, disappoint, or exhaust us. Sometimes we rest. Sometimes we avoid. There’s a fine line between retreat and surrender, and we need to know the difference.

There are days when nestling under the covers is exactly what we should do. Shabbat, for example, gives us permission to withdraw: to pray, to read, to sleep, “to sleep perchance to dream.” To stare at the ceiling, to ignore the news and let the telephone ring. There is healing in that. We can’t fight every battle every day.

But there’s another way to escape, one that I thought about when I recently heard Petula Clark’s 1964 hit song, Downtown. When the world feels like it’s too much, Petula sings about somewhere we can always go. Getting out among the lights and people. Finding somewhere to distract ourselves, somewhere that might make the troubles recede for a while.

I love the wisdom in that. Everyone has a personal version of what Downtown means to them.

Sometimes it means we take to bed, under the covers. And sometimes we need to put on our shoes and go downtown, or uptown, or somewhere entirely different. A coffee shop. A bookstore. A walk through a crowded street. A place to volunteer for a nonprofit we love, a place to listen and learn. The destination almost doesn’t matter.

There’s something healing about being reminded that the world is larger than us and whatever is troubling us. This becomes especially important as we age. We’ve accumulated enough experience to know that some problems can’t be solved quickly or by sheer force of will. Some wounds take years to heal, if they heal at all.

The political world, for the time being, will continue to be maddening. Our bodies will change. People we love will leave us. There will be days when the sheer weight of what we know makes us long for a quiet room and a closed door. So, we shouldn’t feel guilty about occasionally hiding. But we should be careful, because escaping can become a habit. The bedroom that was once a refuge can become a bunker. The covers that offer comfort can become a barrier between us and the life we are still living.

And that, I think, is one of the challenges: learning when to rest and when to rise to the occasion.

Eventually, we must get out of bed. Open the curtains. Answer the phone. Call a friend or return a call to have an uncomfortable conversation. Take a walk. Turn on some music and dance. Visit your parents or your children or your grandchildren… And squeeze a baby. Make an appointment. Forgive someone or ourselves. Cook for family or friends. Plan our next move.

Or maybe we can go downtown and re-enter the world.

This doesn’t mean becoming obsessively productive or unreasonably optimistic. Life is a rhythm of retreat and return. We withdraw and then we recover. We gather ourselves, and then we re-enter the fray.

Aging demands that we keep moving toward life. And sometimes that means pulling the covers over our heads. Sometimes it means going downtown. Either way, the goal isn’t really to escape. It’s to find our way back to ourselves.

So, we hide, if we must. But then, when we’re ready to get up, we put on our shoes and walk out the door and go downtown. The world will still be complicated, but maybe we’ll be a little more ready to meet it.

May we have the grace to rest without disappearing, to retreat without surrendering, and to keep finding our way, in our own time, back downtown. And if you’d like to hear the song that inspired this week’s reflection: here is Petula Clark’s Downtown.

Shabbat Shalom