Sit Down Already

I don't know if this is related to how we are wired or if it's something we learn but I lean heavily on it being culturally and relationally determined. This means that in the culture we have grown up in business is praised and self-care activities have been labeled as 'frivolous' or 'leisure' and somehow we have decided that leisure is not a worthy pursuit. This is often the message we get as we get older and especially as we become parents.

We are conditioned to think that we are only worthy of rest if we have earned it. We have to have completed a certain number of tasks or gotten to a certain point in our lives but it always seems like once we meet the requirements for rest, there is something else that we need to do. We somehow get accolades for our suffering or for how much we have accomplished.

In the end we don't get an extra prize for having the tidiest house, for doing the most laundry or denying ourselves the most joy. I have recently read the book 'Untamed' by Glennon Doyle and one passage that really stood out for me was when she talked about how much it angered her that other people had 'things' that they they did just for the pure enjoyment of it. When she decided to pursue a 'thing' of her own she says:

" But to have that fun, I had to climb down from Martyrdom Mountain. I had to allow myself one less thing to sigh about. I had to ask for help. I had to sacrifice some of my moral high ground, perhaps loose a few points in the She Who Suffers Most Competition. I think we are only bitter about other peoples joy in direct proportion to our commitment to keep joy from ourselves."

We feel sometimes that we have too many other burdens or obligations, standards to meet. It's important to stop and think, "Who's standards are these anyway?' Did you place them on yourself based on your own values or the perceived values of someone else? Either way you have the choice now to change your perspective to allow yourself to be whole and to rest. To love being alive and fully human, to experience all the feelings and acknowledge that you are deserving of every bit of enjoyment you can squeeze out of life.

This squeezing and creating of joy is a necessary part of self-care it fills the emotional and spiritual voids that we so often try to pretend aren't even there. The voids that we recognize only when they are so depleted they start to pull from the stores of our mental and physical energy as well. Before it's too late, sit down already. Connect with what brings you joy and feel the relaxation and peace of being a whole, alive person again.