Blink and It’s Gone.
Time doesn’t stop while you’re busy. This Easter, that’s worth remembering.
Picture it. A backyard on Easter morning. A toddler in a sun hat wobbling across the grass, clutching a chocolate egg with both hands like it’s the greatest discovery in human history. The whole family watching, laughing, someone’s phone out capturing it.
That memory exists in millions of Australian homes.
So does this one. The same backyard, a decade or so later. A teenager doing the Easter egg hunt with one eye on their phone, half-playing along because the family still insists on it, secretly glad they do. A different kind of moment, but just as worth having.
The distance between those two scenes? It goes faster than anyone ever warns you.
And if you don’t have kids, you know this feeling in your own way. The road trip you and your friends kept saying you’d do. The town a few hours away you’ve driven past a hundred times but never actually stopped in. The mate you haven’t properly caught up with since last Easter. Time moves for everyone, regardless of what stage of life you’re in.
The break that almost didn’t happen
A lot of people will technically have this Easter off and not actually rest. They’ll be physically away from the office but mentally still in it. Half present at the table. Vaguely scrolling. Meaning to put the phone down and not quite getting there.
For some families this Easter, the original plan has already changed. The coast got swapped for something closer. The road trip got shelved when someone checked the petrol price and did the mental maths. That sting of having to scale back is real, and it adds its own kind of weight to a weekend that was supposed to feel like a break.
But here’s what I want to push back on. The value of this weekend has nothing to do with how far you travel.
A group of my friends are getting together locally this Easter. Nothing elaborate. Just people who care about each other, some food, some time together. My family are heading to the coast. Different versions of the same idea. Show up somewhere, be present, let the weekend be what it’s supposed to be.
The break you need is not necessarily the expensive one. It’s the intentional one.
What we’re actually hungry for
And it’s not just a feeling. There’s data behind it. Australians are sitting on 209 million days of unused annual leave right now. We have rest available to us and we are not taking it, partly because life is expensive and taking leave feels like a luxury, partly because the culture we work in actively rewards staying connected, and partly because somewhere along the way a lot of us forgot what it actually feels like to stop.
What most people are genuinely hungry for this Easter isn’t a holiday. It’s permission.
Permission to put the laptop away without guilt. To be at a barbecue and actually be at the barbecue. To drive somewhere new or go nowhere at all and have both feel like enough. To let the weekend land rather than manage it from a distance.
The toddler wobbling across the grass with the chocolate egg doesn’t care what’s in your inbox. The teenager pretending not to enjoy the Easter hunt will remember that you were there, fully there, more than they’ll remember almost anything else about this year.
Some ideas for actually making it count
Whatever your version of Easter looks like this year, here are a few things worth trying.
Go somewhere, even if it’s close.
There’s something about physically leaving your usual environment, even for a day, that gives your brain permission to shift gears. A drive to a beach town, a national park, a different suburb you’ve never properly explored. You don’t need a destination with a booking confirmation. You just need somewhere that isn’t here.
Make the local option just as intentional.
If travel isn’t on the cards, the answer isn’t to stay home and half-rest. Organise something. Invite people over. Find the local market or the walking trail you’ve always driven past. A group of my friends are doing exactly this, nothing elaborate, just people who care about each other, some food, a few hours without an agenda. That’s enough.
Have at least one meal that takes longer than it should.
The kind where no one checks the time, and the conversation drifts into stories you’ve told before but still somehow enjoy. Not grabbed between activities. Not eaten standing up. Actually sat around, unhurried, with people you want to be with.
Put a real boundary on work.
Not a vague one. Set your out of office, nominate someone for anything urgent, then genuinely let it go for the four days. The emails will wait. The weekend won’t.
Notice the small moments.
The Easter egg hunt, however it looks in your house this year. The drive where someone falls asleep in the passenger seat. The conversation that starts about nothing and ends somewhere unexpected. These are the things you’ll carry with you long after you’ve forgotten what was in your inbox on Wednesday.
Rest is not the opposite of ambition
There’s a story we tell ourselves in Australian work culture that rest is something you earn after enough output. That switching off is a reward for the sufficiently productive. That somewhere there is a threshold you cross and then, finally, you’re allowed to stop.
That threshold doesn’t exist. The work doesn’t end. The pressure doesn’t fully lift. The inbox doesn’t hit zero.
What does exist is this weekend. Four days that don’t require you to be anything other than a person living your life. The ambition, the goals, the responsibilities, they will all be there on Tuesday. But so will a more rested, more present version of you to meet them.
One day the Easter egg hunt just stops happening. The toddler becomes a teenager becomes an adult, and somewhere in the blur of busy years you realise the backyard mornings you took for granted have become memories you’re trying to hold onto.
That’s not a reason to feel sad. It’s a reason to be here this weekend. Fully here.
This weekend, do something memorable.