YOU CAN FIND MEANING WHEN YOU TAKE THE TIME TO REST

I received some really thought-provoking comments in response to my last email, Rest: A Silence in the Music, I want to respond to a few.

If you haven't had the chance to read that column, you can find it here.

One person commented that she appreciated my use of the metaphor of the rest in a piece of music,

That is, just as the rest in music, the pause of silence, is essential to the structure and rhythm of a song or any piece of music, so is our need for rest essential for a healthy, fully-lived life.

When reading that comment it occurred to me that a metaphor is the only way to get at something as sublime as the nature of rest. Metaphor becomes a gateway into deeper understanding. Of course, rest is not just about stopping, or pausing in order to relax and recover.

The true nature of rest is stillness, an inner silence.

It is an emptiness that, if given the chance, can reveal our life's meaning, an emptiness that is carved out within the relational activity of our lives. What? Seems I'll have to turn to another metaphor to explain.

This notion dawned on me after talking about rest with some friends. One said, "While I was reading your piece for some reason a line from the Tao Te Ching popped into mind, the image of the empty space in a pot being what makes it useful."

He was referring to a stanza from chapter 11, "Non Being" in the Tao te Ching

(John Minford translation):

Clay kneaded

Makes the Pot Useful.

The Non-Being,

The Emptiness within,

forms a pot.

I also like the more playful rendering of Chapter 11, by Ursula K. Le Guin. She names it "The Uses of Not".

Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot's not

is where it's useful.

Pretty self-evident yes?

It could also be self-evident that, while our lives are formed by what we do - all our activities, our strivings, the relationships we form, the many things we produce, what we accomplish or fail at .... and so on and so on, it is important - and beneficial - to embrace pauses that lend themselves to stillness within ourselves.

What I'm trying in my clumsy way to express is this:

Just as the usefulness of a pot is created by what it can carry in it's empty centre, the usefulness of the activity our lives is given meaning by what is carved out and created at its centre, in the time we appear to be doing nothing, just resting.

Put another way, the lump of clay that is our life of action and productivity is given meaning by an empty centre of unproductiveness, even frivolousness.

It is in our pausing to be present, not our in productivity, that we find meaning.

The non-being in the still point of our being-in-the-world reveals our authenticity. Our stillness confirms or challenges how live our lives.

One more comment that contributed to my musings:

So wise. I never used to be so rest averse. Some days, it feels like a delusion of drowning. If I don’t get everything done today, tomorrow there will be more and the next day more. It’s hard to breathe.

The comment itself is wise. We've all been there, feeling like we're drowning in the demands of responsibilities that feel overwhelming. But the comment expresses an awareness that this state of affairs is not right, that the feeling of drowning in a constabt sate of anxiety or depression is not normal.

I hope it doesn't come across as flippant to say that it is best to embrace rest as essential, that taking even a few moments of stillness perhaps just to breathe is more useful - and meaningful - than all the endless commitments and demands. Who knows, a little self-care might feel like learning to breathe under water.