Words: Clare Dwyer Hogg
Image: Barney Beech
Rest. How good are you at resting? It’s a word I’m familiar with, but until recently I have not been a very good practitioner. Being brutally honest, I suppose I find the concept of resting a bit absurd when there’s so much to be done. I say brutally honest, because the sort of life I would live in theory would have rest times built in. You know? Theoretically, I know you can’t survive without rest.
If I charted out my activity, you might think my definition of “rest” was “sleeping”. Or at least eating dinner in front of the TV. In bald terms, rest meant anything that involved doing nothing, and achieving nothing.
It’s only recently, when physical circumstances (not very serious, but enough) forced me to slow down a bit, that I surmised the fine line between being restful and resting. I hadn’t known that they’re intimately connected. Or that usually they have nothing to do with sitting down.
This is the point for a clause: of course, sitting down doing nothing is also a valid use of time. But what I’m currently trying to figure out is how to cultivate restfulness during activity.
It seems to me that resting can be about consciously stepping into each moment that presents itself, and then existing in it. That means doing what I am doing – without thinking that there are 10 other things I could be doing instead, or that I’m not doing enough, or eyeing up the tasks that need to happen when I’m done with this moment.
This slows down the internal pace, even if the external is racing. It somehow lets you in to each section of time. The alternative is to have one foot in the moment, but being partially locked out, because you’re already reaching an arm out to hoist into the next.
This is what I didn’t understand before. I thought slowing down the pace meant you don’t get much done. Or that you let things fall by the wayside. Not the case. What you aren’t doing now will slot into another space, when you can give it more of your attention, in the right moment.
It started with me having to slow down my physical pace, which meant I was doing less rushing around. Being at home didn’t mean I stopped. But it gave me more time to reflect on my actions
In this way, I don’t think that being fully committed to the moment requires blocking out the moment you’ve come from, or where you’re going. The past – whether it is yesterday or your childhood – will always have bearing on your present ground. This is whether you have chosen to shun it (which will be the bearing), or nurture the benign aspects of your experience. So too the future – the wide horizon above our heads – is of course a presence that holds significance, although it is as formless as the clouds.
Still, the rest comes from being fully within the time at hand. Weirdly, this doesn’t even mean doing one thing at a time. Multitasking in a whizz fits the bill OK if that’s the moment I’m in: but there’s something about concentrating on that section of time, and being committed to it, which focuses my mind. The other thoughts and emotions get a mini-break – the chance to lie fallow while work takes place elsewhere. It refreshes them. It’s either that, or an attempt to work on one plot of land with your left hand, while operating a plough on a further plot with the other, via a series of complicated long-distance levers. Draining.
It’s a strange one, I know. But it started with me having to slow down my physical pace a bit, which meant I was doing less rushing around. Being at home didn’t mean I stopped. But it did give me more time to reflect on my actions. Knowing I couldn’t be out and about meant that I wasn’t thinking about what I should or could have been doing when I was at home. Which freed up my mind when I was doing the tasks at hand there. Freed is a good word, because I hadn’t realised how much energy was being diffused into all the multiple layers of thinking and feeling, which, really, can be translated into an essential discontent with the thoughts that actually were sufficient for the moment.
Of course, we are complex beings, and our minds and bodies and thoughts and feelings coexist and fire at the same time. This isn’t about creating a rigid structure for thought – think this, then think that – but more about attempting to go deeper into the actual activity of the moment. Within that lies rest.
It is very strange, but one of the outcomes seems to be that doing less can achieve more.
This is my last Midweek Musings column for Motherland. I have loved writing it. Even though mounting commitments mean it’s the right time, I am sad to stop. But I hope the experiment of living well in the small things will continue.
