I Like Rest

This will be a slightly more introspective blog, if that’s alright. You might have noticed (though because I have access to the page view data, I know you didn’t) there wasn’t a blog post last week. 

“But James!” You say, “You’ve been so consistent! What gives?!”

I’ll tell you, reader. Ya boy was sick! I straight up didn’t feel good. It started on Monday. These are usually days that are half practice admin, half rest. But early in the day, I noticed I was starting to feel feverish. It didn’t take long before I was confined to bed with the shivers and icks. It got worse, then better, then worse again, and now it (fingers crossed) seems to be turning a corner. Is it TMI for a therapist to say that his throat is very sensitive to ulceration? I’ll leave that part out just in case. 

My body was managing all of this on a cellular level. But I, or the part of myself that I think of as “I,”the one that tells all the stories and likes to imagine it makes all the choices, had a lot more to manage. You see, when I was small, I had no real model for health rest. I never really even thought of rest as an activity unto itself. Rest was just what was happening when you weren’t doing something.

I imagine it was the same for you. Most of us in America have this love-hate relationship with rest. We talk about honoring it, elevating it, and prioritizing it, but it’s difficult to define what “it” is. More often, we vilify it. Rest is the same as idleness, laziness, proof of a weak work ethic and weak character. So we simultaneously long for rest and avoid it at all costs.

So all of last week I was in this place where rest was, I knew, essential. But there was a voice in my head saying, “But that makes you lazy, Jim. You’re burning daylight!” The story my mind found most accessible to explain a lack of action was that I was lazy. Bad. 

The worst part was that because I was sick, the wisest parts of myself were down for the count. So this old story just played on repeat and I spent most of the week feeling miserable in body and soul. And then, as I started to feel better, the newer voices started to show up. The ones that I’ve spent years growing into and cultivating but whose roots are a little newer, a little less hardy. 

You are good. Your worth is not defined by what you produce. It is not bad to honor what your body needs to heal. Forcing production when rest is necessary is an act of violence. 

I know there are a lot of contexts in which those words don’t ring true. But they are. They were true for me last week and they remain true for me now. I hope there is a part of you that finds truth in them, too. Until next time, I hope rest opens the door to knowing yourself and loving yourself.

-j