Rest and Reset

Ah, these two words. I’ve come to love them, learn them, and incorporate them. They differ by only one little letter, that’s how closely related they are. It has taken me until very recently to fully embrace resting and resetting, and inviting them in has truly been nourishing, medicinal, and essential. Perhaps this sounds like a lot of words for what essentially means “to take a break”, and I have had to get curious about why this simple concept is often so complicated to achieve. Using my own habitual resistance to resting and resetting as a springboard, I am increasingly interested in the same resistance I see in almost everyone I know. The explanations to why it’s so damn hard to really, really take a long pause range from macro to micro. Western society (particularly American, particularly New York, particularly capitalist) at large promotes urgency culture, heroism in the hustle, and value in over achieving to the point of burn out. We are fed these messages in our toddler sippy cups. They not only come from our surroundings at large but also from many of our families of origin, for a variety of reasons. In speaking with a friend who is also from an immigrant culture, we talked about the immigrant mentality of grit and relentless determination to work our asses off so as to cement ourselves in American society. There is indeed great societal value and validation found in achieving and contributing, and immigrants commonly throw themselves completely into the pursuit of a more fruitful life. Many have left countries where opportunity didn’t exist or weren’t available and so they are driven to make the most out of a new life, especially in light of the sacrifices that needed to be made to chart a new family path. Since I’m from a family of mostly Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, I have definitely inherited the message to work really hard, prove myself, and achieve. My friend, and his family is from a different country, concurred. These motivations are good: they were necessary survival skills in dire times of scarcity and often danger, and work ethic, drive, commitment, and determination are obviously important qualities. We’d get nowhere without them. However, like all characteristics they must be balanced in order to be genuinely effective. Without that balance we burn the candle at both ends and begin to push ourselves past the point of what is healthy, rational, practical, and enjoyable. Enjoyment is so often a forgotten ingredient, and I think the main reasons for that are that it’s seen as a luxury (which is ludicrous) as well as that it’s basically antithetical to the extreme overdrive that is ubiquitously lauded. Where is the joy when we are killing ourselves in the name of accomplishment? I know for myself that no one ever told me to take a break from anything until I met my Zen teachers. I was taught very early on that praise, acknowledgment, and affection were given conditionally, the conditions being that I looked pretty, got good grades, or behaved in ways deemed acceptable. Other parts of my life held the same messages because that was my first learned language. We speak what we are first modeled.  I know many people who were led to believe that the whole hamster on a wheel thing is just the way life needs to be. If we stop then not only do we lose out but even more so, who are we when we are doing nothing? Does our identity disappear when we aren’t feeding it nonstop? Additionally, what are we without that identity entirely? Is “rest” nothing or is it a different kind of something? I have come to realize that not only is rest a huge something but that’s it’s crucial because it’s in that space where a conscious reset is possible. True change of any kind cannot be made from zombie unconsciousness. There must be a period where space is given to recharge and reflect. This, Friends, ain’t nothing. In fact it may be everything because it creates inner calm and expansion, allowing us to recalibrate from a place of regulated clarity.
One of my zen teachers who is now 94 was a professional dancer for the famed Martha Graham dance company. She broke her back and could no longer dance. She went through an existential crisis of not knowing who she was without her former dancer’s identity. You hear stories like this all the time; half the people whose circumstances radically change are lost and depressed for a long time/forever, and the other half learn to dig deeper for themselves underneath their now dead ideas about themselves and their lives. Our ideas about ourselves are vastly different when we are 4, 14, 64, and 94. We keep going through the different stages of natural life with varying scripts to shape each stage. Point being, we don’t maintain the same identity throughout life. It’s neither natural nor possible. Our ideas about ourselves can, do, and must change as we continue to adjust to the constantly changing causes and conditions of life.
I love the Hindu chakra system. The second chakra below the navel is the energy wheel associated with the water element. We are physically comprised of a lot of water. We pee, cry, sweat, and salivate. We came from a womb filled with warm, enveloping fluid. This is our first home. Water represents the ability to flow and adapt, to change shape and form (ice, gas) to fit life’s changing situations. Without the ability to literally go with the flow, the second chakra is out of balance and likely clamped shut. Since the chakras (energy gates) all work together, stuck energy in one will prevent our inner life force from flowing into the next. Blockages and energetic and emotional traffic jams will remain until they are carefully cleared out, like real standstill auto traffic. To clear anything out with care and intention requires stopping to see what’s needed. When we rest and reset we repair. We can move back to the more active part of life with reinvigorated and reimagined freshness. The balance of action and rest is found everywhere in nature. Sun and moon, day and night, sweat eventually cools, crops take time to grow and seeds to sprout, eyes are designed to see then close, and the body requires sleep. There are infinite examples in nature that teach us how the qualities of rest and action partner perfectly to create harmony. Humans are nature too, so how could we possibly live in health and harmony without our own balance of doing and being? To just be without the urge to do and go is one of the keys to living a healthy life. Cultivating the skill of rest is a gift we give ourselves.
The blog has been a great place of practice for me in this area. A couple months ago I decided that after 6 years of pumping out new food content weekly, that I would release myself from that self imposed pressure and do recipes in a way that brought me back to organic enjoyment. I love cooking and do it every day, and I love coming up with recipes to share with my fellow home cooks and food enthusiasts. Before I was able to realize it or name it, I was feeling pressured and stretched that half my precious weekends were spent experimenting in the kitchen. This left little to no time to practice music or to just chill out and take a much needed beat, let alone if I had personal matters to tend to or enjoy. I went on for months feeling like this before realizing I even had an option to shift. Crazy, right? The decision was mine all along but I didn’t know that because for most of my life the decisions were not mine. I was so used to being at the beck and call of others that I truly did not realize that the power and responsibility to make a change lied with me. This was a very important learning that led me to a new, nourishing action. In yoga and zazen (zen meditation) my teachers are always telling me tweak and adjust, even in the tiniest ways, in order to be more in sync with the practice. This is clearly a metaphor for life; we must consciously redirect ourselves in ways that lead to greater harmony with whatever the present moment is bringing to us. Each moment offers us an invitation to come deeper into presence. The hamster on the wheel cannot accept these invitations for obvious reasons. It will run maniacally on the wheel until it collapses or the wheel breaks. I don’t want to live like this, and though I did for a very long time I’m proud to say that those days are over. I have retired my wheel. I work very hard and push myself when I need to. I definitely have perfectionist tendencies that work great when I’m in a creative space (gotta nail it) and can be softened in other areas (I can serve a cake that isn’t magazine worthy, I can have cellulite).
This holiday season I took a couple weeks off from blogging to give myself a much needed rest and reset. This, too, never occurred to me in six years. I am a consistent person who sees tremendous value in said consistency. However, the sky won’t fall if I take a couple weeks off from creating content. In fact, my new content will be better and more inspired after I’ve had a chance to take a pause and miss it. Both you and I deserve this, and this platform continues to school me as my relationship to it develops and deepens. My writing is so different from when I began because I’m so different from when I began. What are we doing here or anywhere if we aren’t learning along the way? I’m so grateful to the blog for being a teacher, and I’m grateful to myself for remaining a student in the most unexpected places. I forget and then I remember, forget, remember. We can always begin again. The next breath awaits our attention.
Wishing you all a magnificent new year full of delicious rest, resets, and reminders of what matters. Take time to nourish yourselves; when we do that everyone around us benefits. This is how we harmonize with life.