So let me explain a little bit about my life at times.
I’ll wake up and do my whole morning thing – I’ll work for a bit; I’ll take my kids and husband to school/work. I’ll get Tessie anything she needs. You know, typical things.
Then about four or five hours later I’ll be a little bit tired and a little bit overwhelmed, and I’ll allow myself five minutes to sit down and check my email or my facebook on my phone. The whole time I’m doing this, I’ll be feeling guilty, like I should be doing my dishes or laundry. I should be reading a book to my daughter or making some beds.
I’ll feel overwhelmed by all of these shoulds, so I’ll just hide a little bit more in my phone.
Then I’ll realize that during all of this time hiding on my phone, the list of undone things has gotten longer.
So I’ll feel more guilty.
And I’ll hide some more.
And then I’ll feel more guilty…
You can see where this is going, I’m sure.
This has been something that has been hounding me for quite some time now. Actually, it’s probably been hounding me since the days I stopped working all day and all night. I’ve never quite known what to do with my time. In my younger years, I never gave myself the opportunity to learn.
I’ve tried things. I’ve made schedules. I’ve scheduled blocks of times. I’ve focused on doing my priorities first. I’ve tried everything I have been able to think of but to no avail. I simply did not know how to mix productivity with renewal.
And then about a month ago, the word “leisure” came to me. I had spent some time reading about the deleterious effects of mindless technology on our brains, and I had done some reading about the deleterious effects of too much work on our psyches. I had been reading about the Sabbath and how we are supposed to take an entire day out of seven and devote it at least partially to leisure. I’d been learning that one thing the Sabbath teaches us is that even God rested.
I think all of this reading simmered in my brain and I started to realize that even though I take time periodically to sit down and even though some nights I’ll sit down and watch a television show or two before bed, one thing I was really lacking, and pretty much always had been lacking, was a time of real leisure.
And I guess I should define what I mean by leisure at this point.
I don’t mean just off time or time spent not doing anything productive. Quite the opposite, I think. I think time spent doing nothing can leave us feeling more drained if we haven’t spent that nothing time in a delightful activity.
No. Instead, I see leisure as time specifically devoted to doing something that fills our soul. It’s time devoted to recharging and re-energizing. It’s time spent devoted to finding what we believe is beautiful – whether that’s art or books or our families or naps. It’s time spent doing something we delight in – something that gives us a little flutter inside our chests.
For some of us, leisure is relaxing. For others of us, it’s stimulating. For me… well, I’m trying to figure out exactly what that means.
And so when 2018 started coming to an end, I realized that I would need to pick a word of the year. Every year I pick a word that I use to guide me and my decisions. Some years I’m great at remembering it. Sometimes I have to google myself and my blog from the prior year to even remember what it is. But every year I promise myself to try to keep it in mind.
I had a hard time believing that it was okay to choose leisure. After all, we almost always tend towards things like renewal and resolutions with a focus on productivity and traditional definitions of success.
I really struggled believing that leisure was an okay pursuit. (Probably more proof that it was the ideal one.)
But the more I thought about it, the more convicted I felt. After all, we can’t be as productive when we are worn down. We can’t pour out into others what we don’t have. We simply cannot be our best until we have taken care of ourselves.
And on another front, I also asked myself why a resolution of sorts needs to be about making us more productive members of society. Sure that’s great, but life isn’t always about productivity. Actually, I would say that life needn’t be about productivity… except when it does.
That part of our lives – that Type A part of our lives – doesn’t and shouldn’t be all of us. We should allow ourselves to be full people. We should allow ourselves time to pursue those aspects of ourselves that won’t make us more wealthy or give us a cleaner house or more productive children or more success in the eyes of the world.
Those things might matter, but they aren’t all that there is. And until we are able to tap into those other parts of us – those parts of us that make our soul sing – I posit that we can’t ever be fully alive.
So I have a thousand little voices in my head telling me I should pick a better word. A word that will better me. But instead I’m going to listen to that small voice inside of me that is telling me not to give up on leisure. That’s telling me to embrace leisure. That’s telling me to teach and share and proselytize for leisure.
So what about you? Do you choose a word?
Interestingly, I couldn’t remember my word for last year. Clearly I didn’t do a good job of keeping it in my head. But then I went back and found my word and read my rationale for it, and I realized that while I had lost the word, I had retained the concept, and in reality, 2018 was a year that centered around it. So I guess I can say, “Mission Accomplished.”
Happy 2019 Y’all!