Exhaustion is not a virtue. Naps heal. Laying in the sun heals. Doing absolutely nothing but day dreaming heals.
Dr. Nicole LePera
As my eyes scanned across this thought of Dr. Lepera's, I'm pretty sure my frontal lobe noticeably twitched. Here lately I have been thinking a lot about our culture's obsession with hustling and be ever-busy along with the correlating rise in mental illness and chronic disease.
We are not always meant to be in a work state.
This used to be a hard pill for me to swallow. I've felt ill my whole life, so I am used to forcing myself to function. Plus, I love to be alive! I love to learn, work, and be active! But somewhere along the way I have forgotten how to just, be.
When you are in a hustle mindset it's easy to get caught up in the future, in fact, your mind may always be in the future leaving your poor carcass on perpetual catch-up mode. That's a recipe for wellness problems in and of itself, but it was the doc's assertion about exhaustion not being a virtue that really gave me a ponderous pause.
Have I been an acolyte in the cult of busy all these years? It's so easy to fall right into the flow of being over-scheduled, saying yes to all the things, playing the postmodern American. box-checking so that I have meaning game.
I mean, here lately I have been embracing the be kind to Kat mindset and saying the best and most complete sentence a lot (no.). My value should not be derived from how much I accomplish in a day.
And let me tell you, historically I have accomplished a lot! For a while in my life, I woke up, did chores on the homestead, taught homeschool for five hours, went and worked my library job for five or six hours, came home, cooked dinner, attended to mom, wife, and responsible adult things, and rinsed and repeated daily.
And I know I am not alone in having that kind of crazy schedule. Since I was used to always feeling bad I just kinda figured feeling exhausted was a normal state for people who aren't chronically ill if they were hustling. What a dolt I was!
I mean, take a look at cats. They might go full zoomies for a bit, hunt or eat, and then spend several hours snoozing or staring at me while I tend to all my tasks. They don't seem to be exhausted ever.
I often wonder what would happen if we as a society started thinking about living more than in a constant growth state. Sometimes my greatest insights happened upon me after spending an hour or two staring at the sky in a hammock strung between two towering fir trees or after an impromptu nap.
Working hard is viewed as a good thing, so why can't resting well be viewed as an equally amazing thing! In fact, I would hazard a guess that both things might be necessary for a healthy, fufilled life.
Then again, I am still learning what that feels like and entails, so you might want to take what I say here with a grain of salt and ponder it after a splendid nap.😉
