Is this sumptuous meal familiar to you?
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| Photo by Alex Munsell on Unsplash |
Most of us find it really hard to take a break away from our
work and other every-day routines.
Are you one of us?
I bet you are.
This was the theme of our poem this week.
We all have jobs to do and responsibilities to discharge.
There is always a deadline to meet. And shopping to do.
Then there is dinner. And the children have to feed and do homework and wake up in time for school.
And if you live in the city or some other large and upcoming
urban area, then you have traffic to beat. And if you own a car, it may never
have occurred to you at the time you were buying it that you also had condemned
yourself to buying parking slots whenever to drove it around. A pesky thing, if
you ask me!
And as if that is not enough, there is the ever rising cost
of living and the ever elusive dream of ‘Happy ever after’. It always seems
to be running faster, and further and further ahead, isn’t it?
How I’m going to make it if I take a break to rest? I might
just miss that, once in a lifetime opportunity, I’ve been waiting for all
along.
They might even advertise my position when I’m away. You
know how devilish those people are. Or they might just realize that my position
isn’t that important after all, and retrench me.
No. I’ll just stay put. Vacation can wait. I can take it
next year. By then I’ll have saved enough to go somewhere nice and Instagram-able!
Or, let me complete this deal. It’s too big and important to
delegate. And I need the credit (wink wink). It’s good for my CV, you know?
Or, there is a Public Holiday and a long weekend coming up. I
think I’ll grab that and run somewhere.
Then when that day comes you find there is yet another
deal to chase and complete. Or the media has reported something and the
Chairman has called for an urgent board meeting. Or there is some committee
or occasion of a close friend that you can't possibly miss.
And so we keep postponing it.
It’s hard to break this chain
of seemingly urgent and important demands on our time. It’s like a curse.
So, how do the few of us we consider lucky do it?
I wish I had an instant solution that will solve this
problem pap! I wish it was something like instant coffee - pour, stir and
hurray!
But i suspect the solution lies in our paradigm.
We live in a social and economic system that prizes the chase. The paradigm
is reinforced by the system rewards, or, to be more precise, the promise of a
reward - that the more busy you are, the more you get, and the more you get,
the happier you will be.
So we keep ourselves busy at it, for as long as we can - sometimes
until something in us breaks down.
The message that success is a function of health and energy,
and that taking rest is important to restore ones energy is drowned and lost in the din of
and pursuit for more.
Taking a break is hard because we have eaten up a false
paradigm.
The paradigm is constantly served and fed to us every day, in what we are led to believe to be a delicious and sumptuous meal. And
we eagerly chew and swallow it whole, hook, line and sinker!
It’s hard to escape its consequences - unless you change
your paradigm.
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