Rest? At This Time of Year? Are You Serious?
On resting when we need it, even when inconvenient.
I am tired. I've mentioned this before, but today I have a blistering headache. Well, actually, it's more of a crushing and also hammering headache. It hurts to move my eyeballs. Migraine you ask? I don't think so, just a very bad sinus headache from the damn pollen here in Austin, because it's still 70 degrees out. In late December. I'm very cranky about this, bordering on real anger.
But I'm too tired to really get behind either emotion with much conviction.
A friend in Indianapolis sent me a picture of the first snow of the season the other day. I was so jealous. I wrote her back that I just need relief from all the sunshine. I know, I know, for those who live in interminable grey winters like the ones in Indy, I get that I sound petulant, but too much is too much, and we got way too much sunshine this summer.
I'm still burned, mentally if not physically. I'm not a philosopher or a psychotherapist, but I know in my bones that we got too hot. Our bodies, our minds and our souls know something is not quite right with the whole system, and for me it's showing up as a desperate need to be somewhere cold and not at all sunny. Like the moon. But there's not a lot of atmosphere there, so that makes it challenging.
What I could go for is a month of moonlight. Like full-moon moonlight. Like the kind you get in Joshua Tree in the winter.
My sister and I were there last year, celebrating her birthday. We sat in the hot tub and looked at the stars each night. We scrambled over the rocks in Indian Cove. The sun was low, the rocks warm on their faces by noon, cool in the shadows.
She and I rested there. She drew, I wrote. We napped. We strolled. We slept in. Resting was convenient.
But what to do when we need to rest and it's not convenient? When there are holidays still to celebrate, end of year deadlines looming, things to buy and people to see. Where then, to fit in rest?
Tricia Hersey, the activist, poet and artist who wrote the book, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, says exactly what I'm feeling, "In a culture focused on hyperproductivity, it can feel uncomfortable to be still and do nothing." Yes, yes it can. But then she gives me something to think about that ties directly into another subject I've been thinking about a lot lately: shopping and my relationship to it. She says, "Imagine what freedom from capitalism would feel like in your body. Freedom from…laboring to feel worthy."
What would it feel like in my body to be free from capitalism, from laboring to feel worthy? I have no idea. But the mere thought of it makes parts of me relax. Just the thought of it.
My husband and I watched A Good Person last night. Mild spoiler alert if you haven't seen it: It's a movie about guilt, forgiveness, love and addiction. It was an easy enough movie to watch, given the subject matter. The people in it were pretty, the addiction didn't get very ugly. Everyone ended up more or less on the way to healing.
Afterwards we had a long talk about addiction and, specifically, whether I had a shopping one. I don't have some of the glaring signs of an addiction. I don't spend more money than I have, I pay off my credit card easily every month. I wear what I buy. I buy 90% second hand. I can go shopping and not buy anything. But I get into cycles, where I'm obsessively looking for something and where I buy dozens of things, only to take them back. Rinse and repeat and I get stuck for a beat in this cycle of wanting and not finding, of searching and being left empty handed–even when I do buy something.
Shopping is a way I check out, a way I get to do something mindless, but still not restful. I find it satisfying in a way most other things aren't and I also often feel tired and worn out afterwards.
It occurred to me recently that I shop because it's a quick and easy fix to a much deeper need to feel pretty, to feel a part of something, to be included, to belong. Cue Barbie and her wardrobe and Ken not having an existence without her.
But also it keeps me safely away from spending money on things that would actually make me feel better, that would satisfy a deeper craving for connection, for learning, for spiritual and mental challenge.
I have so far been unwilling to give up spending my money on the relatively inexpensive pretty things in order to have plenty of money to invest on the more expensive, difficult things that will require my presence and effort: another yoga teacher training, a meditation retreat, a writing coach, a regular appointment with a chiropractor and a massage therapist.
My newest fixation is an emerald and diamond necklace. I rationalize that I didn't get anything big for my 50th birthday. I rationalize that I'm a grown woman and I should have nice jewelry (I already have some). I rationalize that if I stop buying shit I don't need from Goodwill and Anthropologie that I could save enough in six months to buy said necklace. I rationalize that I will wear it constantly for the rest of my life.
But once I get that necklace, what else will I want?
And don't get me wrong. I haven't spiritualized my way into not wanting that necklace. I think it will make me feel powerful and strong and rich and successful. That I will feel like I did something big and important and that I belong with the other women who wear diamonds.
And I wish I were a woman who really didn't care. But that's not me yet.
Perhaps I need to spend a week at a meditation retreat and see how that makes me feel. Maybe I will get real rest and feel what it feels like in my body to be free from capitalism, even if just for a few days.
I wonder then if I’ll still want the emeralds. Probably yes. They are very pretty. But will I feel like I need them?
Maybe. Maybe not. And maybe it’s time to find out.