habits

As the year winds down for those doing One Word practice, many of us have turned our attention to discovering or choosing a new word for 2021. Because Carolyn, whose blog has guided my practice this year, has been hosting a lively and inspiring conversation about selecting new words, it’s been tempting to let rest fade away quietly in December. But I am a dutiful sort, and I know I owe rest a debt of gratitude and a summation of its impact on my life this past year.

It’s taken me nearly six years of retirement to settle into a slower, more mindful, less frantic pace of life. Old habits die hard—the tendency to say yes and get involved before really thinking, in particular. But 2021 has offered me more open space and more free time, and the word rest has lent focus for settling into a new mode of living.

These days, in both winter and summer, I routinely wake up at around four a.m. and, unable to go back to sleep, get up and begin my day while it is still dark and silent. I’ve watched and photographed many glorious dawns, sat completely still in my cozy den with my dog beside me and a cat on my lap, just breathing and listening to the silence. So, each day begins gently and quietly.

There is always at least one long, slow-paced walk early in the day, amid the beauty of green summer foliage or among stark bare winter branches. I delight in the dog’s excited sniffing, in watching the trees sway, or searching for wildflowers. I try to get outside my head on these walks and observe what is happening around me. Just watch and listen.

After that, work—connecting, communicating, planning, writing, gardening, cleaning, errands, appointments. Following the teaching of the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, I try to do each task mindfully. Of course, it’s going to take many more years of practice to be as aware and attentive as I aspire to be, but I’ve noticed tiny incremental improvements over the last six years, and that gives me hope.

For instance, I now sit down to eat meals most days, departing from my previous practice of grabbing bites between tasks or standing at the kitchen counter and spooning food into my mouth, often coughing after swallowing each mouthful. In summer, I may eat breakfast and lunch in the garden; a pair of clippers and a watering can close at hand so that I can roam from bush to flower, watering, and pruning as needed. When I first sit down at dinner time, I pause and become fully present in the room, at the table, to the person(s) across from me and the food before me. I give thanks and smell the delicious odors. I try to put my fork down after each bite and concentrate on chewing and swallowing. I still eat more quickly than anyone else at the table, but slightly more slowly than I used to do.

Swimming has gotten slower, and I spend more time luxuriating in the hot tub and the sauna after my swim. I often take short naps, sometimes only 20 minutes, but they are deliciously relaxing and bring balance. Though I’ve not read nearly as many books as I would like, I’ve read more than in past years.

These settling changes have come about gradually and naturally, but my mental and spiritual exploration of the word rest has influenced and provided new motivation for them. Using resources provided by Carolyn, monthly check-ins have enabled me to probe the meaning of rest for myself and the world around me. Definitions, synonyms, word associations, visual images, sounds, and watching others have opened new doorways to understanding.

For instance, I spent significant time contemplating balance, juxtaposing effort and rest using this image. I would not know what rest is without exerting effort, and vice versa.

The Roots and Fruits image of a tree with many branches helped me hold all my discoveries about rest together, organically and systemically.

The Foundation and Building Blocks diagram teased out basic concepts intrinsic to my experience of rest.

Living with rest for the last year, reflecting on its meaning, has been not so much an attempt to change as an experience of noticing—observing the gradual transformation happening within me. With intention and practice, with patience, acceptance of failure, and beginning again, I’ve come to a more restful way of being. Watching the process brings joy. Discerning progress, however small, gives hope.

I still have a long way to go. My habits are tenacious. But I am not leaving rest behind. Indeed, I’ve chosen next year’s word(s) to take me further along the path to accepting, letting go, and resting.

Links to my previous posts on rest in 2021.

One Word – With All Due Respect

REST – My One Word – Mid-Year Check-In – With All Due Respect

I’ve been making lists since, well, probably first grade. As soon as homework entered my childhood world, I began making lists: assignments for the next day or the next week; vocabulary lists; when playmates would come to my house, and I go to theirs; lists of things to do, lists of things to buy, lists of Christmas gifts requiring “thank you” notes, lists of letters or cards due, packing lists, bill paying lists, phone call lists, email lists. Virtually all of my lists focus on things that I must not forget. Sometimes, they are things I feel I must do to be viewed positively by someone else.

Usually, making a list calms my anxiety about forgetting or failing. That function is a useful and helpful one. A thorough, prioritized list can talk me down off the ledge of panic. For most of my career, I was responsible for accomplishing my work and helping my bosses keep track of and achieve their goals. I could not have been successful or, indeed, survived without an advanced “list-making” technique.

And then came retirement, and I went right on making lists. To this very day, five and a half years after I left my last job, a list sits next to my computer—this one I have highlighted in multiple colors indicating the urgency of various tasks.

I’ve heard it said that there is a great deal of satisfaction to checking off a task on a to-do list. I’ve experienced mild pleasure in doing that. But invariably, for each job I check off, I add at least two and sometimes ten new ones. The sense of accomplishment does not last long or feel deeply gratifying. Indeed, when I go to my list to check off a recently completed item, my eyes will stray to the rest of the list where I will note, with a sinking heart, the number of things I was NOT doing while I was finishing the one thing just checked off. Even as I initially choose one item to focus on for half an hour, I am aware that fifteen others will go undone in that timeframe. Truly a depressing and discouraging realization—perhaps the epitome of the “glass half empty” syndrome. Here are the things I am not able to do right now because I AM doing THIS.

It’s a vicious circle—a vicious list.

I have friends who make fun of me because of my “obsessive” list-making. The implication is that I am at least a little odd, if not downright bad. It has been hard for me lately not to subscribe to their point of view. And, truthfully, I’d like to do away with list-making as a thing of the past, no longer necessary in this more relaxed stage of my life. But remember, I have been doing this since I was six years old.

Realistically, I don’t think a complete about-face is likely. I can and have moderated my list dependency, and I give myself breaks from it periodically when I am on vacation, sick, or on retreat. However, as with most other aspects of my life these days, the most helpful approach is to take myself less seriously, to “hold it lightly,” as one of my friends might say.

A few quotes from Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala, Boston & London, 1991) might shed some light on the “path” I am currently cultivating:

“…if we see our so-called limitations [habits, crutches, addictions] with clarity, precision, gentleness, good heartedness, and kindness and having seen them fully, then let go, open further, we begin to find that our world is more vast and more refreshing and fascinating than we had realized before.  In other words, the key to feeling more whole and less shut off and shut down is to be able to see clearly who we are and what we are doing.” [p.13-14]

“The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.  The other problem is that our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth.  Our neuroses and wisdom are made out of the same material.  If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom…So whether it’s anger or craving [for comfort through list making!] or jealousy or fear or depression—whatever it might be—the notion is not to try to get rid of it, but to make friends with it.  That means getting to know it completely, with some kind of softness, and learning how, once you’ve experienced it fully, to let go.” [p.14-15]

“Our life’s work is to use what we have been given to wake up.” [p. 30]

Thank you, Pema!

So, I am not going to pour a lot of energy into reform. Instead, I’ll look deeply at what lies behind my list-making. What are its roots? Where does it come from? What’s life-giving in it and what is not. I will offer acceptance to whatever I find in that investigation and hold it gently, lightly, and kindly. While I do that, perhaps I will find myself understanding and feeling compassion for others who, like me, have compulsions, coping mechanisms, and addictions. I’ll wonder about the roots of their behaviors. And I’ll try to open up—wake up—to the other side of the coin of my neuroses and theirs, our wisdom.

Year-End, My One Word – Rest

The Tyranny of the List