I know it is counter-intuitive, just 7 days before Christmas, to think of taking (or giving yourself) a break, however, it might just be the very best thing to do.
Please read on, and see if you agree…
Love, Honey
In Praise of Idleness
by Alexander Green
Americans idealize hard work, duty, industry and self-sacrifice.
We know this, in part, by how many terms we have for those who lack these qualities: loafer, idler, shirker, slacker, goof-off, deadbeat, bum, goldbrick, layabout.
As children, we’re taught that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Idleness is synonymous with laziness – or worse.
But other cultures take a different view. The Japanese have the highly ritualized tea ceremony. The British have afternoon tea, a relaxing half hour with Earl Grey, cucumber sandwiches and genteel conversation.
Mexicans dispense with tea altogether and just take a siesta. (As the Spanish proverb says, “How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterwards.”)
Successful lives are not always measured by achievement. Too much time at the grindstone can leave us culturally impoverished, spiritually indigent. We should know how to cultivate leisure, to use it to rise to higher levels of grace and intellectual repose.
No sensible life is without periods of indolence. Besides, idleness can be a noble attribute, a virtuous pastime.
Consider that culture itself is a byproduct of leisure. Idleness leads to contemplation, creativity and inventiveness. These, in turn, resolve themselves in literature, poetry, music, philosophy and art.
Downtime is an energizing force, too. It clears our heads and gives us strength. Without it, our concentration is diminished, our immune systems are stressed, our reasoning skills are diminished. We get tired and cranky.
Idleness reflects our status as free men and women. It is an expression of liberty. True idleness is not doing nothing. It’s being free to do anything.
Yet in today’s society, indolence is hard work. Family will poke and prod you. Colleagues will try to motivate you. Even a night on the town comes crashing down when your companion utters those lamentable words, “I really ought to be going. I need to get an early start.”
Yet work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
Aristotle said, “The great-souled man will not compete for the common objects of ambition… He will be idle and slow to act.”
Mark Twain – whose characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are among the most resourceful loafers in all literature – once wrote, “I have seen slower people than I am – and more deliberate… and even quieter, more listless and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.”
Ronald Reagan, a master of inactivity, once remarked, “It’s true that hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?”
Yet, once ingrained, it’s hard for many of us to break free from the Calvinist work ethic, to return to that natural and blessed state of inactivity. In short, we feel guilty.
But we shouldn’t. One can even argue that idleness has a divine sanction. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:28-29)
Hebrew sages even taught that when you are first welcomed into heaven, a record is revealed to you of all the many times in your past when you could really have been happy and enjoyed some moment but failed to do so. And then you are called to repent of each and every one of those moments.
The best lives are not lived in a hurry. Why pursue wealth if not to purchase a bit of leisured contentment? After all, the great end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
Winston Churchill understood this. British historian Paul Johnson recalls the time as a boy when he met the Prime Minister in October 1946:
“He gave me one of his giant matches he used for lighting cigars. I was emboldened by that into saying, ‘Mr. Winston Churchill, sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?’ and he said without hesitating: ‘Economy of effort. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.’”
And with that, he stepped into his limo and pulled away.
Carpe Diem,
Alex
http://www.spiritualwealth.com/