Well, I’ve spent two days doing absolutely nothing. I brought grading home and it needs to be done, but there it sits on the kitchen counter. I suppose I can give myself some credit for watching television that won’t bring me any nightmares, but I do wonder about the animal welfare oversight in “Milo and Otis.” And in my own defense, I started getting an earache and sore throat, and the best way to fight these things off is to rest. Which brings me to the inevitable question of why I need to defend rest. What is it that makes me feel guilty for being a little self-indulgent for a couple of days. It’s not as though I’m irresponsible and continuously self-absorbed.

When I was growing up I worked for my dad from the age of 11, mowing lawns after school and on weekends. He pulled me away, crying, from a friend’s birthday party and said, “Do you think I want to work this hard?! No! I taught all day and I’m tired and I’ll have homework to grade when I’m home.”
That came after “If I’d had a boy, he’d do it. But I had a girl, so you’ll have to to do it instead.”

It wasn’t his greatest hour. Now that I’m grown I know he was working three jobs, had an unhappy childhood and was in full avoidance of all his grief about my mother’s unexpected disability. Being buried in work was part of how he coped with emotions he didn’t want to face. His hair trigger temper and general unhappiness were understandable, but I was 11 then, and all I felt was that I didn’t matter. My feelings didn’t matter. My heart didn’t matter. I wanted to please him so badly, to make him look up from his work and smile. I never succeeded, but that was always my goal. So I thought the very least I could do was learn how to work, and work hard. I didn’t want any special treatment because I was a girl. I lifted lawn mowers, hefted bags of clippings and mowed up and down hillsides without complaining.

People always ask if he paid me, as though that made any difference at all when I was 12 and had no say in what I did or didn’t do. For the record, he did pay me. He found it to be a great opportunity to teach me how to handle money and pay my own expenses while being able to write off his payments as business expenses. It was quite clever, really. I learned how to be responsible and hard-working. I learned how to take initiative, keep my head down, and my mouth closed. I learned all about hard work.

Really though, there are plenty of people who have a hard time not feeling guilty about taking time off, who haven’t had the same upbringing. Perhaps it’s something about being American, a sort of “forging west, doing your part, pulling up the old bootstraps” kind of thing. We take fewer vacation days than almost anywhere in Europe. It seems like we feel like better people if we work hard. We don’t want to be slackers, or unmotivated.

Maybe it’s something to do with our sense of impending mortality. We don’t want to waste time. But what ramifications does that have for people like my mother, whose disabilities preclude the possibility of employment? Is her life worthless or meaningless? And what about people like myself, who can work but have emotional and related physical limitations that require them to occasionally stop completely to recharge? Are these necessary down times wasted? I admit I’ve often felt like it.

When I was small, I was a dreamer. I was only ever in trouble at school for looking out the window and dreaming, or getting caught up in natural wonders on my walk to school and being late. It seems like wasting time is almost intrinsic to who I really am. I think and feel deeply, and those dreamy times have sometimes brought a sense of spiritual connection or a momentary release from the pressure of dealing with all the practical burdens of life. This release can sometimes lead to inspiration or creativity. But here again, I feel myself pandering to the need to justify rest.

What if rest justifies itself? Even God has been said to rest, which according to the Judeo-Christian way of thinking means it can’t be bad. What if it’s a gift to have time just to be? We are not, if we admit it, fully defined by what we do. Yes, our actions provide proof of our character, and tangible evidence on which we can base our evaluations of others. It is not, however, everything that we are. I’m not just a professor, or a writer, or a beginning artist. I’m not just a former musician. All of these things are definitions based on things I’ve done. I am something more than all of that in my heart.

What I cannot escape is that this essence of my being, this ephemeral spirituality that exists outside my physical parameters, my innermost “me” requires expression. The other day I sent something I wrote to a friend and said, “It’s as though what I write does not exist unless I share it.” Similarly, it’s as though my self does not exist unless I share it. Sharing requires activity, which is sometimes work. Being and doing seem to be inescapably intertwined. And yet, being and doing exist in time, and nature itself suggests there are seasons for everything, laying the groundwork for new life. For myself at least, being must precede doing if the subsequent actions are to be meaningful. And resting helps me connect with that being, so everything I then do is a more accurate representation of who I really am. Being must be the source of my doing, or else I’m merely engaged in frenetic activity of little depth. So basically, the fact that I’ve been sitting on my ass for two days straight is an action itself of immense importance. It is a form of doing. It’s the mulch of fall leaves and the hibernation of winter. Spring will come soon enough, with plenty to do. Hopefully that doing will be more than me leaning in and keeping my head down. Hopefully it will be an expression of my heart.