Slow Down

“I lied and said I was busy. I was busy but not in a way most people understand. I was busy taking deeper breaths. I was busy silencing irrational thoughts. I was busy calming a racing heart. I was busy telling myself I’m okay. Sometimes this is my busy.”

B. Oakman

A friend and I were zooming about her anxiety and grief. She told me that she was struggling to find meaning in her life. Recently retired, she speculated that perhaps after decades of being mind numbingly busy, maybe this new season of rest was waking up all the skeletons in her closet.

Disruptions in our routines can do that. Many of our routines are actually created to keep us perpetually distracted, numb and out-of-touch with ourselves. This short term solution is attractive but over the long haul? Not great.

Productivity addiction is like those weird diets we fall in love with - attractive for the immediacy of the relief but inevitably we return to our pre-carrots-only diet weight. Too hard to think of slowing down? I know. I feel you. But let’s try.

Who Believes in You?

How many people thought you’d never change? But here you have! It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

Kate Light, “There Comes the Strangest Moment”

In the early weeks of the quarentine, facebook memes were posted to encourage us to use our time to produce, change, and make the most of our time in isolation. I hated each and every one. I thought about how, someday in the distant future, historians would write about all the ways our world changed after this season of quarantine and anxiety.

Will historians write about our productivity in spite of this crisis or might they chronicle the after-shocks of a world stripped of its favorite dependencies? Who is to say? I do not know.

But I do know this. We are ALWAYS in need of change. One of my “projects” while in quarantine was to take online classes in topics that I hope will make me a better human being. One course was on Motivational Interviewing - wow. It was good and hard. The instructor told us that only 15% of the people who are taught MI actually achieve competency in the practice of MI. Discouraging? Not to me. It simply helps me understand what I am up against. This is hard; I will need a LOT of instruction, practice, feedback, and correction.

And is this not exactly what the 12-steps have trained us for? I did a freaking 5th step!! How tough can it be to have an instructor coach me on improving a skill set that I actually want to learn!

Quarantine is NOT the time to lean into productivity. But we can find purpose, meaning, and reasonably contented moments so long as we are also paying attention and using the tools we have to deal with trauma, stress, and withdrawals from our dependencies.

Today I sent my kids a text: “Anyone who can find and bring to me Minute Maid Lemonade (light) will receive payment and a generous commission.” This is my dependency at work. Fortunately, I have the tools to deal with it and so do you!!! Let’s keep changing in ways that make us better human beings - ok? This is the best way I know to encourage one another!!

Productivity and rest

One temptation for assessing one’s value is to cheat. We cheat ourselves and others when we decide that value equals productivity. I am a big fan of productivity, but I have learned that the most productive among us are those who learn how to relax. It turns out that boredom enhances creativity.

When we cheat our evaluations of self and others by limiting our perspective on what is valuable, we are not living within the flow of rest that God encourages us to enter.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Mark 2:27 NIV

A day of rest is intended to be….restful. How can you find restful spots in your day?