I asked a social worker once, who saw a considerable amount of human misery in her job, how she coped with the hard things she dealt with at work.

“I’ve made my home into my sanctuary,” she said.

We all have different ideas of the kinds of environments that restore us and refresh us, but in order to create a personal sanctuary, the foundation is in four invisible luxuries, which I call the Four S’s: savings, silence, solitude, and physical space.

The Four S’s of Sanctuary: Silence, Solitude, Space and Savings

Silence is freedom from unwanted sounds.

Solitude is freedom from the input of other minds.

Space is freedom from clutter and crowding.

Savings is freedom from anxiety.

All of these things buy you time to think and reflect, or simply time to rest. All of these things are also luxuries, that require effort and intention to set up.

Part of what you buy when you stay at a luxury hotel, is a sense of sanctuary.

Once my husband and I stayed at a true luxury hotel in a city: one that we could afford only because they were renovating, and offered us a serious discount. The city was noisy, but the room was deeply, richly quiet. The walls and windows of the building were sound-proofed to shut out the noise from the streets. Doors and drawers inside the hotel room had been fitted with hardware to make them close slowly and quietly. It was not possible in that room to slam a door. It felt spacious because it was large and uncluttered, and had a sweeping view. That hotel room was a sanctuary in the middle of the city.

Another experience I had of sanctuary: I stayed for a few days at the guest house of a Catholic monastery that follows the Rule of Benedict. The room was, in many ways, the opposite of the luxury hotel with its spare and simple furnishings, and without a lot of space; but it too was peacefully quiet. Although the room was small, the buildings and grounds welcomed guests with plenty of space to wander and read, or just be. The days I spent there still shine in my memory.

Luxury hotels and retreat centers provide the Four S’s: they cultivate space, silence, solitude, and the savings needed to maintain buildings and grounds.

Sanctuary is the Opposite of Overwhelm and Reactivity

Without the Four S’s, you are in a state of deprivation.

Consider what it is like in environments where you have no savings, no solitude, no silence, no space. These are conditions of deprivation, of overcrowding and overwhelm. These are the conditions of poverty and prisons.

The opposite of the Four S’s is clutter, clamor, crowding, and crises: scrambling to figure out how to get what you need, when you don’t have the money. Being unable to think, because of constant noise. Having to search through piles of things to get something you need. Living in a neighborhood where it is dangerous to step out for a walk; where it is dangerous to let your body and mind wander.

Environments without the Four S’s are environments where you constantly have to react: you have no room to reflect when you are surrounded by clutter, clamor, crowding, and the crises that come from not having enough money to deal with the unexpected.

We think of poverty as lack; but it’s just as much, if not more, about too-muchness and overwhelm.

Impoverished environments — environments without access to silence, solitude, space, and savings — push people into constant chronic stress.

The Reactivity Casino in Your Pocket

Be mindful, also, of the reactivity casino so many of us now carry around: the smart phone. I had that conversation with the social worker in the early 2000s, when no one had smart phones.

Smart phones, by design, are set up to extract your savings, your solitude, your silence, and your space from you.

Hunching over that little screen also leads to overwhelm.

Sanctuary is the opposite of overwhelm and reactivity.

Sanctuary is the presence of the space, silence, solitude and savings that give you time to think for yourself, at your own pace; time to rest and restore your spirit.

In order to make our homes into sanctuaries, we have to build the habits that create the Four S’s intentionally.

Most of us have to build them over a long time.

Savings, Silence, Solitude, and Space Don’t Just Happen; They Must Be Pursued

Savings, silence, solitude and space are luxuries because they are hard to get. They don’t just happen.

You will not have sanctuary unless you actively pursue it. Sanctuaries do not come without the determination to have them.

It takes effort to sort through your things and discard what you no longer use ; to curate space that gives you a feeling of openness and breathing room.

It takes effort to save enough money to give yourself a buffer, some financial breathing room.

It takes effort to set aside time for solitude; for thinking your own thoughts, instead of consuming a stream of others’ opinions.

It takes effort to seek out quiet, and get comfortable with it, instead of scrolling online for something to distract or entertain.

But the rewards are worth it.

Creating sanctuary is how you get rest, and how you get time to think your own thoughts, before you go back into the fray of daily life. Creating a sanctuary for herself is what allowed the social worker I knew, to work for decades in an emotionally demanding job.

Cultivating the Four S’s in your life — space, silence, solitude, and savings — is how you get the time and conditions to think, reflect, and respond; rather than react.

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