There was a Presidential debate tonight in the US. No, I didn’t watch it. No, I’m not going to talk about it. Instead, I’m going to talk about something we could all use a bit more of these days: rest. I don’t mean sleep, although that helps. I mean REST. Mental and spiritual quietness.
No matter what your political beliefs are, there is a lot of tension in the air. Things on both sides of the aisle are fraught, and even without politics, there’s a pandemic on. People are dying on a daily basis of a literal plague that has no end in sight. It’s easy to understand how we are all tense. For many people, rest is something that waved goodbye months ago, and won’t be back until the pandemic is over. But rest is something that is absolutely essential. No one can keep going indefinitely. We all have to put our burdens down at some point and take a few moments to recharge.
That, however, is easier said than done. This topic came up today on a friend’s Facebook. He is the type who is a bit obsessive about things, and he deals with it by trying to solve the problem, which is a commendable coping mechanism. However, when faced with problems that have no solution, either in general or one that isn’t accessible, that sort of coping mechanism runs into problems. What do you do about a problem that can’t be solved? How do you deal with that? For a certain kind of person, that is practically the definition of hell. Which is apropos, because we will speak more about hell later on.
When I read that, I felt it necessary to impart to him a bit of wisdom that I had to learn the hard way: that when faced with problems that have no solution, you just have to do what you can and then accept that you can do nothing more. At that point, when nothing else can be done, the next step is to do nothing. To rest. To take the time to put that burden down and use your energy elsewhere, or to simply recharge.
Doing nothing is hard, especially now. Activism is a big thing these days. There is a push to make the world a better place, which is understandable because with the increasing availability of information we have the ability to see all the flaws in the world. So people of a certain nature feel driven to do everything they can to fix those flaws, and it’s hard for some of them to accept that doing nothing can be a positive thing. However, you can’t fix the world if you can’t take care of yourself. Remember the flight attendant’s instructions: put on your own mask before helping others.
Looking at all the problems in the world and trying to solve them can seem like an endless task. If a person is not careful, it can begin to feel like pushing a boulder up a hill over and over again, only to have it roll over them on the way back to the bottom just before they reach the top. But even Sisyphus took a break every now and again.
Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology. He had cheated death and was cursed to push a stone up a hill where, at the top, it would roll back to the bottom again. There is a story where the musician Orpheus came down to the underworld to rescue his muse Eurydice. When Orpheus was faced with Hades, the god of the underworld, he played a song to convince him to release her. According to the poet Ovid, the song was so sweet that even Sisyphus stopped to listen. “Inque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo” (“and you sat, Sisyphus, on your rock”) (Ovid. Metamorphoses, 10.44.)
Even when it feels that we are engaged in a hopeless, endless task, we must learn to take breaks. We must learn to do nothing when nothing can be done. We must learn to stop and listen. To appreciate the small moments, and let them recharge us for the battles ahead. If we are to push our various rocks up our various hills in our own Sisyphean struggles, then let us pause every so often. Sit on our own rocks and appreciate beauty when it finds us.
Especially in an election year during a plague.
