Is "Laziness" good for your health... and our planet?
On January 5th I'd planned to be feeling refreshed from family celebrations and eager to hop into 2022. I’d planned a fun 7- Day Transformation Game - you were going to be invited!- and, suddenly, I had Covid.
So I spent most of the January resting and healing and feeling - although sometimes impatient - deeply grateful.
I am grateful for vaccines because although I was exhausted and achy and majorly brain-fogged, it did not feel dangerous. I am grateful for multiple novels and my sweet companion cat Pele who was always happy to curl up with me.
(BTW, please, if you’re against vaccinations: Let’s just agree to disagree. Please, don’t email me with articles about that oddly divisive topic. You’ll be on my grateful list too!)
I am profoundly grateful that years ago I learned the healing power of surrendering to deep rest.
Finally, I woke up one day feeling my Vital Energy - Chi, Life Force! Yippee! Welcome back! - bubbling and flowing. Natural enthusiasm, the desire to get outside and to stride and skip and the ability to think and even write a few coherent paragraphs is returning. Hooray.
Have you experienced the healing power of deep rest- maybe even more rest than you wanted, maybe even more than seemed logical or reasonable or socially acceptable?
Do you ever have trouble resting?
Hmmm, actually I wonder if there is anyone in our hustle-bustle, push-achieve-do-have-consume-more culture who does not have at least a little conflict with surrendering deeply to rest?
Although I'm a flippin' ambassador for the power of rest, and although over these last weeks, I mostly trusted my healing process, I must admit- anxious, impatient, internal voices did pop up.
“Still?! Again?! Another day you need to rest?! Maybe you’ll never feel better and you should just push through! Maybe you’re just being lazy.”
Ahh, yes, the lazy insult.
Yesterday I read a great NYT opinion piece by Elliot Kuhn, a rabbi who “provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill or disabled... [and who] is working on a book about the power of rest in a time of planetary crisis.”
The title? “The Most Valuable Thing I Can Teach My Kid is How to Be Lazy.”
How radical is that?! Radical in the true essence of the word, Kukla’s piece goes to the very root of what he - and I - see as a modern imperative: We must rest more.
“I have seen the limits of the grind. I want my child to learn how to be lazy," he writes.
Kukla discusses the origins of the word lazy and social research into our cultural attitudes toward laziness and how this connects to injustice and racism and climate change and how a shift toward what we call laziness is needed for personal - and global - healing.
“Many of the ways I have learned to live well in a chronically ill body — by taking the present moment slowly and gently, letting go of looking for certainty about the future, napping, dreaming, nurturing relationships and loving fiercely — are relevant for everyone living on this chronically ill planet.”
What do you think? Could “laziness” be a vital medicine for these times? Leave a comment below.
