Rest Is Not Idleness

I’ve decided that Summer is actually about 3 weeks long. Once you take off the visitors ‘visiting’ time, and the parent involvement in summer activities you are actually only left with about 3 weeks of unscheduled summer.

Hmmm.  Three precious weeks. To nap, to read, to walk, to make overdue phone calls, and catch up on entertaining with friends you don’t see enough.

Our lives are so overscheduled these days that it takes a few days to actually ‘get into it’. To accept that the phone not ringing isn’t a bad thing. You’re not missing anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t have friends. Simply accept this time as a gift…

I often think that in days gone by – this is how people felt all the time. They may have worked much harder physically with no electronic gadgets, but when the day was done, there wasn’t addictive TV shows, emails to answer, or a Facebook to connect to. The sun when down, the moon came up, people talked, played games, went to bed, then woke up early to face a new day. We are so overscheduled and over stimulated that we fall into bed and wake up with a groan. We have to drag ourselves up for the new day.

I was raised with a strong work ethic. My Mom never sat down, although the men did. In many ways that was a good thing. It was easy to excel in my career. To look good next to everyone else who did the minimum. I always did ‘extra’ and it paid off. But it has also left me with a deep sense of guilt doing things I like, just for me. It would have been unimaginable to read if there was washing to be done, or nap in a hammock if the dinner wasn’t prepared.

Recently I came across this wonderful quote.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.” John Lubbock

I’m keeping it close. To drown out the other voice that says ‘you can’t’ and ‘you shouldn’t. I’m determined to ‘can’ and to ‘do’ and to teach my family that ‘rest’ actually means to ‘fill yourself up’ and once you’ve done that you’re able to ‘give’ more to everything and everyone else.

Idle has never felt so right.