RESTING
Well folks, here goes. Having my own blog is an idea whose time has come. Avnish Katoch had created one for me several years ago, but I never got around to posting anything. Almost immediately after completing GANESHA GOES TO LUNCH: Classics from Mystic India (Mandala, USA, April 2007) I started another book: PILGRIMAGE TO PARADISE: Sufi Tales from Rumi, which will be out in September ’09 by both Mandala in the US, and Penguin in India. Though the latter book was completed in January this year, I still didn’t get around to writing for the blog because I have been resting.
My first posting will be a paean to rest. I believe it is the hardest thing to do, and absolutely the most essential – for people of all ages. I will tell you the recent circumstances and details of my rest, by and by, and post an essay I wrote on rest almost ten years ago when I was writing a book titled THE WRITING WARRIOR : How to Turn Failure into Success. My hope is to make you introspect about your own relationship to rest, which I believe is intimately tied to creativity, joy and health.
But first, because this is my first posting, I want to ramble and meander a bit. Rambling and meandering is something I love to do because it is the way our minds work –not in a linear way, like a straight line from point A to point B. Minds work like trees and streams – branching off again and again, bending this way and that, drooping, rising, twisting, turning, and all within perimeters that express and contain.
A word about expectations from me: I want to share my humanness with you, not pose as some Guru who knows it all and has all the answers. I think of myself as primarily a writer whose task it is to expose the entire spectrum of human thoughts and feelings with brutal honesty. So, you will hear about my wisdom as well as my depressions, my knowledge as well as my folly. I think the first premise of wisdom is the acknowledgement of one’s utter and total ignorance in the face of the great mystery that pulses all around and within us, and the second is humility. One cannot go wrong with these.
I have been a workaholic all my life, and doubt that this will change much till the day I die. I love to write, and like all things I love to do, it is easy to over-do. We over-do because of several factors which I will go into later. Most importantly, we fail to listen to our bodies when they send us signals and alarms. In an age when our success is measured by production, it is easy to drive ourselves too hard.
I once read somewhere that the opposite of joy is not depression or anxiety, but rest. I have found that all my ‘negative’ states of mind are caused by tiredness. Observe yourself: are you more positive on the days you are rested? Do you think more tired and destructive thoughts in the evening when your body is asking for rest and relaxation? Your rhythms probably vary from mine, but if you observe your trends you will discover a pattern to them.
(A word about observations before I cease to meander and get on with the agenda – you see, digressions can be very valuable and may contain the meat of the argument. Somebody once gave me a pencil from an observatory with these words printed on it: Have you observed today? It has become one of my mantras. My observation, however, centers not upon the stars, but on my own processes. If you have your lens focused upon what goes on inside you, you will learn a great deal about yourself and the ways of the world. This is a certainty.)
I want to suggest that if you are feeling the lack of joy in your life, depressed and non-creative, it is because your body needs a deep and prolonged rest. I have discovered this to be true of me, over and over and over again. It is not easy to remember this when you are in the throes of a depression and a sense of futility, but not remembering this can lead to more depression, if not disaster. I have to admit that during the last years of my teaching career, I was practically suicidal. I didn’t then realize it was because I was overworked and tired. But after some life style changes – that included retiring before I had intended to, and a long, long period of rest, I recovered and feel at the peak of well-being and creativity.
Of course this thought branches into many others – the question of money, mortality, spirituality, to name just a few, all of which I will go into further if I see that there is some response. Well, actually, I’ve just decided to do this for an entire year — whether there is a response or not! This is how I have been about my writing long, long before I began to be published and to get an audience. So, in addition to the above branches, I add some more – audience, achievement, success. I will do about a one-page post two or three times a month. More, if the muse moves me and if I have leisure from my current writing project, a novel titled Coherences, and of course, rest, which in my case means not only sleeping a lot when my body calls for it, but gardening, reading, cooking, walking, playing with my dogs, and hustling to get my books out there.
My desire in starting this blog – even more than getting my books out there – is to help in whatever way I can.
And/or, wait for the next post.
