In Balance · Thursday
The art of resting
A summer you plan so thoroughly that you come back from it more tired than when you left. Let us try it differently this year.
Do you know the feeling? A summer you plan so thoroughly that you come back from it more tired than when you left? The list of places to see. The photographs to take. The children to keep entertained. And somewhere at the bottom of the suitcase, the book you have meant to read for three summers in a row.
I have noticed one thing, in myself and in the women around me. We can plan a holiday down to the last detail - but we do not know how to simply be on it. Again and again we look after everything and everyone, only not after ourselves. As if rest were one more task to be completed with distinction. We lie on the beach while, in our heads, we draw up all that must be done once we are back. We are in a beautiful place and take it in only half-way, through the screen of a phone.
I think that somewhere along the way we learned that rest has to be earned. That first we must catch up on everything, tidy it away, settle it - and then, when there is time, we will rest. Except that time never quite comes. There is always something more.
This year I want to try something else. This year I want to rest without granting myself rest as a reward for duties fulfilled. I will allow myself to rest because I need it.
Resting, too, is not about where we go. It is about whether we allow ourselves truly to be there. A morning when we are in no hurry to be anywhere. A lunch that calmly lasts two hours, because we have nowhere to go. An afternoon with no plan. A book finished simply because we are enjoying it. These are things that call for no change of place, no plane ticket, no hotel - they call only for the decision that, right now, you have to do nothing.
Summer is the ideal time for it. The city empties, the pace slows, even the most demanding people around us suddenly have fewer requests - and that is when slowing down becomes socially acceptable. It would be a pity not to use it.
So this summer let us try to grant ourselves the one thing we grant ourselves least. Time for which we owe no account to anyone. Not even to ourselves.
Naďa