Chill
Out
“I
had no idea how much these quiet pleasures had retreated from my life while I
was rushing around, and now I’m inviting them back in: still, rhythmic work
with the hands, the kind of light concentration that allows you to dream, and
the sense of a kindness done in the process.”
Katherine
May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times; p.21-22;
Riverhead Books, 2020)
This
book by Katherine May was given to me for my birthday by my friend, Rebecca,
who informed me, “Because you don’t know how to rest.” She’s right of course. I
am not good at resting or sleeping long hours or any of those restorative human
habits. I trace this back to having grown up in a family who subscribed to the
Puritan work ethic—if you weren’t doing something useful, you were a slacker.
I’ve discovered what
happens when you don’t know how to rest: you are perpetually tired and eventually,
your body has had enough. It slaps you down and makes you pay. The payment is usually
in a form you won’t like—illness, or pain conditions, or both. Katherine May
described how most of us feel right now in Wintering: “I’m tired, inevitably. But it’s
more than that. I’m hollowed out. I’m tetchy and irritable, constantly feeling
like prey, believing that everything is urgent and that I can never do enough.”
My house has been under
construction for several months, which is a good thing. But you know what
happens when you have work going on inside your house—everything gets piled in
the middle of the room, sheetrock dust covers every surface, work boot tracks
run up and down the hallway, and the front porch is covered in mud from the
tile cutter. It’s a mess. I clean up one little section, and then lie down to
rest. Trying to make decisions about what keep and what to get rid of, what
piece of furniture to put where, what to hang on the walls, on the windows,
seems overwhelming. Maybe I’ll just lie down a minute—it’s nine o’clock in the
morning.
Winter is all about
taking that time to rest and restore. Many animals literally sleep through it.
There was a time when we humans went to bed at dark and arose at daylight.
Long, long, hours of sleep to restore the body to health. But it’s not even
seven a.m. and I’ve already received half a dozen texts from friends. Saturday
morning should be sacred sleep-in time, but who’s resting? Well, Liza-dog is—but she’s
got better sense than I or, apparently, most of the people I know.
We are heading into
November, and our hours of darkness will increase every day until late December.
Mother Nature tries to give us clues—it’s dark, she tells us, time
to rest. But the holidays begin this weekend with Halloween and will not sign
off until early January. Most of us have been vaccinated and feel free to
gather with family this year. That’s exciting, just like the construction in my
house. Even so, we have not recovered from the pandemic. It drags us down, but
instead of resting, we accelerate the pace. After all, this is America—the capital
of workaholism.
I hope today, we’ll think
about the pace of our lives. Take a minute to evaluate how much rest we get and the impact
that has on our health. Perhaps this winter will be different—maybe we’ll use
our long hours of darkness to reimagine our lives as balanced. Who knows! Maybe
we’ll even learn how to sleep-in!
In the Spirit,
Jane
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