Rest - The middle phase in life ...

Rest is non-negotiable

I am disappointed to share that at the time of typing, I remain rubbish at rest. But I am committed to updating my schedule to incorporate rest. The frazzled headache I started my day with screamed at me, ‘Jo, you’re overdoing it again’, which is fair and true and requires immediate, corrective action.

The legend of a dad that I have adopted for myself, reminded me earlier this week,

‘Please remember as we get older, we need to rest more’.

What wise words. But if I don’t apply them in practice they are about as helpful as medicine that remains in the cabinet or a bible that’s gathering dust.

Earlier this week I met with my fabulous neighbour who always reminds me of the sort of wisdom I am prone to forgetting, as well as introducing her own. She commented on how people talk about working super hard to earn their rest. While there is a reality to this for anyone engaged in adulting, she made the point that we need rest regardless of how productive we have or haven’t been. We may need more if we’ve been super active but we need rest regardless and more of it as we age. This simply hadn’t entered my thinking before!

The other point was one my neighbour pointed out to me last year which was that we even need to say ‘no’ to doing things we love. I know I need to stop expecting my brain to multitask at unsustainable speeds for way too many hours per day. But I also need to limit and reduce time spent indulging in playful activities. To recognise the need to reduce work, despite loving it, is one thing but I’m really struggling with reducing play!

I still remember the first time I realised how utterly exhausting play can be. This occurred during my later-to-the-party-than-most gap years. I couldn’t resist going in the sea on an inflatable banana while island hopping around Thailand. The constant process of lurching through the air into the sea, swimming back to the banana, hauling myself back on to it and trying to hold up my bikini to avoid flashing my arse, was more exhausting than it looks from the shore!

Anyway, all these years later and I’m still struggling to accept that I don’t only need to reduce my working hours but also the playing ones. The only thing I need to increase is my resting time. Or rather, I need to start introducing it rather than just conking out if I sit still or when I lay down at night.

While messaging a fellow counsellor and feline friend owner this week, I couldn’t resist sharing a photo of Monty boy sprawled on the sofa next to me. He sleeps more and more these days, I thought to myself, feeling slightly envious. And then I got it! Oh, he’s modelling resting to me as something essential as we age rather than the optional extra that I’ve been treating it as. Apparently, what makes animals different to us is that they don’t think. I know they feel because Monty is a master at all kinds of expressions, especially the nonchalant, disinterested look he freely gives to all my guests. Anyway, I remain unconvinced that an animal’s inability to think, puts them at a disadvantage. This is because an overdeveloped human intellect combined with underdeveloped instinctual feelings can leave us vulnerable to doing what our mind demands over what our body needs. There are some prevalent and insidious ‘shoulds’ that if left unchecked, can keep us bound to unhelpful ways of being, or rather overdoing. For example, there are beliefs that ‘resting is lazy’, or ‘self-care is selfish’. How deeply entrenched these destructive ideas can be. Although I’ve made progress, I remain prone to these. I will try to correct this situation with actions rather than more lip service.

To this end, I’m going to schedule some wall gazing, daisy watching, birdsong listening windows of time in my daily diary, moving forwards. My feline loving fellow counsellor wisely flagged up attempting 75% of what I think I can do in a day. There is definitely room for improvement here as I’ve been operating at about 125% in between conk outs!

Meanwhile, when he’s not looking out of his cat flap wondering if the rain will ever stop, Monty is enjoying a nap upstairs on my bed. Maybe I’ll even let myself join him later!

The need to rest

Having reached week eight of 2021 lockdown living, I am well and truly ready for a break from work. And this despite the fact that I absolutely love what I do.

However, I’ve been utilising the additional time and energy afforded by the restrictions to paint the house from top to bottom alongside work and other creative projects. Whilst I feel very satisfied with what I have achieved, I have also completely exhausted myself!

Hence, I’ve consulted with the calendar, counted down the remaining weeks until Easter and decided I need a break now to see me through.

The responses I get to this time off vary from ‘going anywhere exotic – haha’, to, ‘oh, you’re having time off when you can’t do anything?’.

It would seem that in general terms it is considered wasteful to take holiday when you can’t go away on holiday.

Not by me!

Sure, I would like to take off on a jaunt to the coast. I miss the sight, sound and space of being by the sea. But just because I can’t do what I really want to do, does not mean I wont do what I can do or enjoy it to the max.

And so, next week I will simply enjoy alarm clock free waking and work free living.

The days are a little longer and for now at least way milder than the snowy temperatures we saw a few short weeks back.

I look forward to taking walks without clock watching, week day bike rides and a leisurely nose around the garden centres for some Spring time inspiration.

I plan to sit still and actually enjoy being in the conservatory and new house in general, rather than going flat out to decorate it.

I even plan to make time to read more than one newspaper in the week. What luxury!

And I may even go crazy and sit and read my book.

Or walk through the fields with my camera at sunset.

I’ll probably indulge in some baking and creating in the kitchen.

Maybe I’ll have a few catch up calls with friends.

What’s not to love?

The fact that I cannot do many of the activities I may want to, does not mean that I cease to need time out to rest from my usual responsibilities.

Rest remains as, if not more, important than ever.

Bring it on.

The Importance of Doing Nothing

Last Christmas I was fortunate enough to have a month on a dairy farm in New Zealand. This was with a very special family that I first visited in Christmas 2005 which subsequently turned in to me staying with them until August 2006!

We connected.

We fit.

We worked.

To re-establish the connection with them over Christmas by spending time in their midst was the most precious gift to me.

It was family.

And to be amongst them especially around the first year anniversary of losing my beloved spiritual mother, was the most healing and restorative experience.

I could just be.

At first they seemed surprised by my ability to simply sit and stare out the window. But then they realised that I hadn’t lost the plot, I was simply practising the art of doing that glorious thing called no-doing, or nothing!

Effectively, I was doing the equivalent of a phone being on recharge.

It helped that as the farm is situated amongst the green rolling countryside, the view out of every window was pretty spectacular. The assortment of fruit tree’s heavy laden with produce just added to the paradise feel of the place.

And, it gave me immense pleasure to use some of these fresh from the tree’s ingredients to bake all kind of goodies for such an appreciative, quick to devour style audience. As well as producing endless cups of very English tea.

I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful place to simply be with family enjoying cups of tea, long meals, walks and film nights.

It was a real wrench to leave them again having been blessed beyond belief by their gift of time and family.

But of course, life was calling and I had to return.

Having been gifted with the chance to recharge my batteries, I returned to my life with a fresh vigour and renewed capacity for all the things that I love to do. So I hit the ground running and threw myself whole heartedly in to them all.

This has been great.

But, just because I am no longer on holiday does not mean that the need for appropriate amounts of time and space to do nothing has disappeared. And having failed to schedule in enough of either, I was reminded last week that I need to slow down, pace myself better and guard my times to just be. Despite loving all the things I do, the need to also do nothing remains.

I know this stuff but how easy it is to forget. Or to get it wrong as my need for rest alongside my capacity for productivity are not static. I am delightfully aware that my capacity for all is significantly increased this year but I am not yet getting the corresponding balance of rest time quite right.

An article I read the other week also reminded me of the need to do nothing. Apparently the current trend amongst young people has shifted from YOLO – you only live once along with the FOMO – fear of missing out, on to JOMO – the joy of missing out!

And there was me thinking that such a joy, along with an appreciation for staying in and early nights, only arrives with the onset of middle age!

Apparently not as it would seem that even our young folk are realising that non-stop activity no matter how interesting, fun or on trend, is neither enjoyable nor sustainable.

We are returning to the age old wisdom that understands that in order to perform at our peak, we require times of inactivity.

The importance of rest or wall gazing time is for me at least, paramount. It allows me to process and to regenerate the creative juices. Without which I can find myself at a total standstill, feeling blocked. Not dissimilar to when my laptop freezes and refuses point blank to do anything.

I was reflecting upon this the other day when my laptop was going decidedly slow. I performed that high tech restorative operation of switching it off and on again, which appeared to breathe new life and speed in to it.

Gosh, I thought, if even technology needs to be completely switched off from time to time to allow it to function well, how much more must us humans?

It would seem that in order to prevent us from unwittingly slowing down, freezing or even crashing, we need to schedule in time to switch off from the constant stimulation of work, technology and modern day living.

In other words, we need to make time to be.

Be with God.

Be with family/friends.

Be alone.

But just be.

To this end, alongside a refusal to fill all the gaps in my diary, I’ve begun booking coastal retreats for the next few months.

I aim to try harder to remember the need and the joy of missing out, by developing, planning, monitoring and practising the art of doing nothing!

Beware the Fun Thief … ..

Recently I’ve noticed a particular theme which grabs my attention from time to time.

As I listen to people talk about the various trials and tribulations of life, it becomes apparent that when consumed by these life challenges, one of the first things to get squeezed out of the schedule is … having fun.

It seems to start so subtly that it operates off the radar thus stealing the opportunities for fun without even being noticed. Sometimes it’s years before people realise that they have unwittingly allowed themselves to lose or to stop investing time in all the very things that bring them joy.

There is a further pattern to the things that appear to get stolen which is that they are usually creative in nature. For some it will be painting or sketching or for others something musical or baking and so the list goes on and on.

Fun takes different forms for all.

But we all need fun.

But it’s as if at some point within adulthood, these activities get thrown in the back room, often to never be seen again. Once out of sight, they get forgotten about. As if these are things that we simply grow out of or cease to need.

I think quite the opposite is true for once we enter the world of adulting with all its responsibility and seriousness, I think we need the fun, physical and playful stuff even more than ever! If only to balance out the heaviness of all the grown up stuff.

Yet it is as if play is written off as only being the domain of those officially known as ‘children’.

What nonsense!

Why should the little people get all the fun?

Don’t we need it even more?!

It is almost like there is an unwritten rule that folk unwittingly sign up to that banishes all fun in favour of responsibility, as if the two cannot be interwoven.

No wonder so many adults are bitter and resentful about their lot.

Fun, play and creativity are the very aspects of life that nourish us sufficiently to do all the big stuff.

They provide us with a source of joy.

We need them.

And we let them go at our peril.

I became aware that I had allowed myself to lose some of my playtime during the seriousness of my many years of studying and training. I felt like my creative juices had ceased to flow. Blocked up by an imbalance of work.

And so I dedicated a year to reclaiming the gift of fun.

Big time.

I enrolled the help of an excellent book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which guided me through the very important yet oh so fun business of reclaiming some of my favourite things; downtime, play and underpinning all … creativity.

I rediscovered old joys like baking cakes (and of course eating them), writing, dancing and reading but I’ve also discovered new ones like solo trips to the coast, singing and pilates.

Fun matters.

It’s good for our health and wellbeing.

Seriously.

No matter what stresses or strains we are in the midst of experiencing, the need for fun not only remains but actually increases in the face of challenges. Thus it is down to us to proactively invest in making time to indulge in those things that bring us joy.

Laughter, fun and play really are medicine.

Soul medicine.

Whilst applying these principles at a barn dance last Saturday night, I got in to a conversation with a teacher who was discussing how schools are cutting physical education and the arts from the curriculum. What a shortsighted and misguided way to attempt to increase and improve academia.

What a tragedy.

And a false economy.

Unless we want to produce a generation of robots taught/programmed to produce ‘results’ no matter the cost, or the loss of soul.

When did we stop recognising the value of fully rounded individuals who know how in the words of the old Mars advert, to ‘work, rest and play’.

The ‘work, work, work’ philosophy doesn’t work.

Not for anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

Except as a life shortening and quality of life removing activity.

In order to function fully, us humans need physical activity, play, downtime and creativity.

Whilst these are being further and further squeezed out, is it any wonder we’re becoming a nation of zombies sat transfixed by the latest series on the TV/Ipad/Technology.

Life really is too short and too full of unexpected challenges for us to allow the fun parts to be stolen.

Now is the time to reclaim our ability to play, to be active, to create and overall … to have FUN!

Rest and Rejuvenation …

I think it is so utterly important to regularly take time out to rest.

As a real home body everyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love my home. However, when it comes to taking time off work and needing good quality rest, I don’t always manage this at home. Because there’s always that bit of cooking or washing up or gardening to tend to, or the mail that demands your attention as soon as it enters your home.

It’s never ending.

And so I make sure I get away during my breaks. It doesn’t have to be far away or expensive. But I think the act of releasing ourselves from the daily grind is vital to our ongoing wellbeing. At least I know it is for me.

Last week I went to Suffolk where I arrived at 8.30am on Easter Monday having been accompanied for the best part of the journey by a lot of rain. I headed straight for my favourite seafront establishment where I settled myself on a comfy settee to enjoy a hot breakfast along with a coffee. I relished the treat of intermittently looking out to sea and reading the newspaper.

I was thrilled to be on holiday, to have gotten away from it all and a little bit or even a lotter bit of rain was not going to dampen my spirits! Freedom and spontaneity had my name on!

I did decide it was the kind of weather that demanded a visit to the cinema to check out Peter Rabbit though. Aside from sharing the cinema with an army of very small but champion standard rustlers, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. And so wonderful not to be rushing straight out of the cinema to meet the needs of a pre-set schedule.

I had that most precious gift of all; unshackled time.

Returning to my favourite place from which to stare out to sea, I happily whiled away numerous hours relishing in the utter joy of being free to do nothing but well … be! It was heavenly. I read. I wrote. I captured ideas. I had visions. I ate a delicious Cajun salmon dinner that I hadn’t had to prepare. And I revelled in the delight of simply being alive.

During the next few days I did a lot of my favourite things. I ran along the beach at sunrise (the sun even put in an appearance from behind the clouds on two out of the three mornings), I started my day with the most enormous two course breakfast that was served to me at my B & B, I walked for miles along the sea front, I attempted to capture the beauty of my surroundings on camera, I caught up with a friend over dinner, I lazed on park benches relishing the first feel of the sun’s warmth on my face, I sat on grassy sea facing verges drinking tea from a flask (so middle aged and totally underrated), I got in to my pj’s and sea facing bed at 6pm, I drank copious amounts of tea and I read more newspapers than I’d usually manage in a month.

So overall, I managed to indulge in excessive amounts of eating, writing, walking, running, photography, reading, dreaming, sea gazing and simply being.

Gosh I love to get away.

It was utterly wonderful.

No work. No post. No email. No internet connection even. (My initial frustration about this quickly dissipated). No washing up. No housework. No gardening. No driving (I didn’t get back in the car from the moment I parked by my B & B to the moment I left. Such a treat.). No schedule. No commitments. No hassle.

The only exception was sleeping in a single bed. I always feel like I need to be half awake all night just so I don’t relax enough to roll over and out of bed. Not conducive to quality sleep. Never again will I make that particular mistake.

Following this four day coastal extravaganza, I returned via another part of the coast where the sun came out in full force bringing with it the masses. I’m not a fan of crowds so I was happy to start my drive home. And it felt equally good to get back.

I’d had the chance to step out of my ordinary daily life and in creating distance, the chance to view certain situations with a fresh lens. Meaning that I’ve returned home with a very different perspective on an important situation. It’s too easy when immersed in our lives to see them purely from the perspective of being within it. When stood at a distance, it is possible not only to observe the bigger picture but also to notice the same one from a different perspective.

Rest is so important.

We live in a society that fixates upon constant activity. Yet if we look to nature, we see that in the long term, more is produced following seasons of rest. If this is true of the land, how much truer for us humans?

Rest is vital.

To us all.

It may look different to each of us but if we eliminate it from our schedules we do so at our own risk. For far from leaving us to fall behind, a good rest can enable us to move forwards.