Taking A Business Break: Out Of This World Indeed

You can work work work all the livelong day, but your kids will still remind you that you’re a mom mom mom who needs a business break every chance she gets (which seems to be every 23rd full moon or so.)

When your days are filled to the brim with business-building responsibilities that are compounded by parenting activities, life can feel like a circus for everyone involved. So why not spend your business break taking your kids to see what a real circus looks like?

Over Thanksgiving break, my girls got to see what the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus is all about. We’ve been to plenty of circuses in their short lives, but this one held more weight than the rest: I saw the same circus when I was a little girl. The Greatest Show on Earth has been around since 1919 — and its consistency in the greatness department astounded me. In fact, it seems they’ve gotten greater. 

There were lions! And tigers! And it was a real bear of a time getting my blood pressure to come down as 5, then 6, then 7 motorcyclists rode around in a big metal ball (in perfect precision, mind you.) There were trapeze artists flying around while ice skaters were pinwheeling as basketball was being played on unicycles. What?

Clowns were walking upside down, acrobats were tip-toeing on simet wheels, and the contortionists reminded me how out of shape an entrepreneur can become sitting at a desk all day. And there were dogs. So many cute dogs.

My girls got a real treat: This was the first time that my old friends at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey decided to offer up a character-driven storyline during the show. Queen Tatiana served as a wonderful newcomer after Anna and Elsa’s time was just about up in our household.

Best of all, we celebrated the experience — now shared generationally — by overdoing the acrobatics in a pigsty of a home. Hopefully my girls now have a deeper understanding of the fact that no matter how much our lives feel like a circus, they will never, ever, ever ride a motorcycle into a metal ball for any reason whatsoever.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents Out Of This World will travel throughout the United States on a multiyear tour, including stops in Chicago, Denver, Miami and Atlanta. For a complete list of tour dates and locations through March 2017 and to purchase tickets, please visit the Ringling Bros. website. Stay current on the latest developments and tour dates near you by following them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube — @RinglingBros.