I am in the stir of rest research and moving things from LA to San Francisco, and starting radiation therapy and literally resting, that I'm just going to flow this one out and pray it makes contact with your heart in some way.
Over the past few weeks, I cannot stop talking to people about rest. Even in how I talk about rest, I seem to put both me and whomever into a state of soft whisper-talk.
All I have to do is ask them about rest in a way that is really saying, hey, I love you and you're too hard on yourself, and people will start telling me their deep rest wounds and how they fear slowing down. How the pressure is too much or how rest isn't possible for everyone and how all these truths make rest so complicated and messy. How it makes us feel less deserving of it, because not everyone can have it. And how their whole identity is around someone who gets! things! done! so I guess they're locked into that persona until... they die?
I mean, DAMN. When did we start feeling like we must earn rest? When did we decide taking a break will place our entire identity into question? And why is it always good people who need rest most, yet rarely seem to demand it?
((We know “when,” but if I get into the pains of capitalism and the systemic and soul plague that is the patriarchy right now, I will not sleep. And I, I need sleep. Okay. Let’s keep going.))
Look, I know not everyone can slow it all down. I get that. But I also think a lot of us have been bamboozled into thinking we must keep up at the same pace we're going right now, or else.
Aren't we all tired of keeping up? Who are we even keeping up with? I rarely find it's other real people. Most often it's a flurry of perfectly groomed holograms of ourselves, but slightly better looking, more graceful, smarter, and always, always, out of reach.
We are very good at producing these little perfection-holograms because we have been trained to do so. With each new desire, a new hologram forms until it becomes a global-scale factory of Perfect You's.
Wow! What imagination! Look at you go! Dreaming up a million versions of the Perfect You in mere seconds, nano-seconds, nay this image has been permanently fixed to the walls of your brain since birth. You’ve been practicing this imagery for years! Decades! You are a master at perfecting yourself in the depths of your mind.Go you.
To keep up with these Perfect You(s), we run and we add and we fight and we cling and we gripe and we throw all of heaven and earth at what we want until finally, maybe, we get where we want to be. But then we get there. We arrive. For a brief moment we are satisfied.
And then, we look down at the murky water we waded through to get to My Perfect Self and we see the scrapes on our knees and wrinkles on our face that came with the territory of living ambitiously and we say, “Gross! I want to go back! I want a redo!”
If God is a singular being with the ability to roll their eyes, this would be the exact moment when they exercise it.
And what really crushes me is that in this mad process… we forget.
We forget we are whole and deeply worthy just as we are. We forget linear time is made up! By us! We forget how to like ourselves. We forget our connection to each other. We forget about how exciting it is to not know. We forget how freeing it is to surrender. We forget how to trust, how to be.
And of course! Of course, we forgot. Because the world can be painful and people can cloud our view of it.
But you know what the antidote is to all this mess?
Oh yes, yep. Rest.
Rest grounds us. Rest is our medicine. It brings us back to center, back to ourselves. Rest fills us up. It creates space. Rest shows us the other side of the prism. It expands our minds! It’s not time, but rest that heals us, even if we do not know how to heal.
We do not even need to know how to heal, and deep rest will heal us. Because deep rest allows us to remember who we are. Rest also shows us what wounds are making us run so hard in the first place.
Because rest is also honest.
So, if we were together sharing secrets, what I’d want to know is… why aren’t you ready for rest? Why doesn't rest feel like a good place to go? What truths does rest have to tell you?
Now, these questions tend to hit a part in us we do not like to visit. (Hence the hologram fantasy factory.) And that's okay. Maybe just massage it a bit and see what feels right to explore. But don't ignore it. The answer may be one that surfaces pain, but it'll also be one that helps you see just how much you deserve rest now.
Because you do deserve rest. Now.
Okay, I love you. Email me and let me know what you’re thinking and how you’re resting.
xoxo,
B.
Wow, a good reminder. Thank you! Definitely made me look harder at my life in honesty.