Making Time to Play
“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”
Brene Brown
Before spending a few minutes blogging I zoomed with a young woman who is terribly certain of who she is and what she wants out of life. She is driven and ambitious. She is hitting her “targets” and taking no prisoners. She is checking off the boxes and I can only guess that her family must be very proud and probably a bit intimidated by her. She is living the American dream. And she is miserable.
Almost a year into the pandemic, she is beginning to question herself. This is new and quite scary for her. I suggested she take some accrued vacation time and find sanctuary. We talked about what that might look like, and she could barely stand the idea long enough to hold up her end of the conversation.
Finally, she said - “What if everything I thought I wanted in life was someone else’s idea?”
Great question.
So, in solidarity with my melting down friend, I’d suggest we all take some time to consider whose dream we are living. This will need to include rest and play more than another self-help book or redoubled efforts at the current favorite spiritual practice blowing over the religious landscape.
Yesterday Pete and I went walking in the snow. Baby, it was cold outside. But the snow crunched under our boots and our skin tingled with the fresh air. My heart soaked in the silence that only a snowfall can bring to our suburb. Afterwards, I spent several hours working on a puzzle of tea cups. It’s 1,000 little pieces consisting of shards of various bright colors sneakily repeated through the picture and devilishly creative shapes were challenging. I focused hard and then upped my game. I worked in silence in front of a warm cozy fire. I talked to no one and replied to zero texts.
Finally, my eyes worn out and squinting, I went to bed.
In the middle of the night I was startled awake by a solution to a problem that I had been noodling over for 6 weeks. I grabbed a pen and wrote it down in a notebook that I keep in my bedside drawer for situations like this. This morning the solution seems as plausible and well-formed as it did in the darkest part of the night.
Listen, I do not think our obsession with success is going anywhere in this country. We can rail about what we’re missing with this singular focus or we can work with it. Want to succeed? Then rest. Want to feel like your life was worth living? Play. Maybe as we rest and play we will find new ways of being in a world that values what we do sometimes to the exclusion of what our actions cause us to become.
