Have you ever noticed a lot of people are very, very tired? Yes. How are you today? I’m so tired. Why?
Well, I had my homework to do or I had something to do or I had computer games to play or whatever the excuse is, I am tired. As a society, it would seem to me, we are not getting enough rest. And obviously, if we don’t rest, we suffer from some form of fatigue. And that fatigue surely is debilitating when it comes to our growth, spiritual and otherwise. So, what is one to do?
Well, I think it would be fair that life is a lot like a battle in a sense or perhaps even something bigger. A series of battles culminating in a war. And sometimes in those battles, we lose the fight and we have to retreat. And perhaps the war is not lost, but we’re beaten for the moment. So we need to regroup, rebuild our morale and set off once again.
Failure to do so, of course, and we will have certainly a diminished amount of intellectual capacity for sure. We will be in trouble. You know, I taught a doctor, dermatologist, for a period of time, and he said something to me once that I never forgot. And I’ve alluded to it before, I’m sure. He said, whenever you’re really busy and you need to rest, to paraphrase, just stop for a moment.
Pause, the wonderful pause, catch your breath, and have a look around at the reality that you truly occupy. And that’s not reality on steroids at a incredible speed. It’s a reality that’s extremely calm and peaceful. And I tried this recently. I was, of course, late and that increased the speed of my motorbike and I was screaming down the road and then it just came to me for a moment.
Like, wow, stop and smell the roses. So I did stop. I pulled it aside. I turned the engine off. I took my helmet off, and my god, I could hear birds twittering in the distance.
Children were playing in front of me in a park. There was water running, small waterfall. Water was cascading down. For a moment, I was in a form of paradise. It really shocked me.
So I had to ask myself, my gosh, rest cannot only be going to sleep, getting into a bed because I’ll never get into a bed on time it seems. I’m too busy and I’m sure I’m like everyone. So what do I do? Well, I think at the very beginning of my day, a routine is restful. Make my bed, say my prayers, write in my notebook.
So this is a form of rest. So at the beginning, I need, of course, physical rest. I need to try to prioritize my sleep. Some people, I really respect this, some people can take a nap during the day. I’ve never been able to take a nap.
Never. I’ve tried. I really have, but it doesn’t seem to work. Then, of course, my mother used to rest in a hot bath. I always thought that was charming.
Wow. That was great. I can’t do that either. I always have a cold shower. I feel like the stoics that I should bring myself just a tiny bit of hardship as they say.
Then I resort to a kind of mental rest, which I was talking about before. I stop sometimes during the course of the day, and I just catch the moment. I do try to say that this is a time of rest, and this is a time of work. So I do take some breaks, of course. And I do try to meditate, say my prayers, talk to God as much as I can as I perceive him, and I like to clean.
I do clean a house, and I do try to organize. This is also a type of rest. Then, of course, many great scholars say we do need emotional rest. Right? And that’s when we actually write in our notebook and, you know, do once again say another form of prayer.
We do reduce the amount of contact with people. Solitude sometimes is a wonderful way, of course, to rest. And then turn the phone off. And I really try not to look at the phone in the morning for one or two hours as such. Just leave it alone because it really doesn’t seem to matter at all.
I mean, in two hours, the world will go on. Right? And then I get back to, I guess, a kind of a form of creative rest. I just like to scroll at times in my notebook and just write endless passages that are perhaps meaningless, but they mean something to me, you know. And just keep away from the activities.
Right? Go inward. Because I think ultimately, what we forget about rest is that I am ultimately alone. There is no one like me. There never has been and there never will be.
So in this form of solitude, I must try to find myself, I guess you could say, and give myself that moment of rest. Because, you know, when you really think to yourself, if you’re rested, you are imaginative and creative, and you truly need your creativity today in this seemingly complex world. Now a friend of mine was mentioning the other day that some foreigner on some MRT train got into some altercation with an old man. And as he left the carriage, he flicked the old man’s hat and, gosh, the old man got the police involved and you can see where the story went. Not good for this young man, I am sure.
Why why would a person be this foolish? Well, I tend to think that perhaps he was just tired. He didn’t get enough rest. And you think to yourself, the amount of times that people do such foolish things in life. Obviously, they did not get enough rest.
So, gosh, try to get physical rest, enough sleep, and if you can’t get that, do use that pause that I was talking about earlier. Feeling that, get to a gym or take a walk in nature, but learn to rest, really. And if you rest, you will be a more productive human being. And that’s your job. Right?
To take in and ultimately to give back. So find ways to achieve rest. You’ll become a better person. Right? And you know what they say.
You know what they say. Critical thinking is truly necessary if you’re going to find ways to rest. And ultimately, critical thinking is great. Truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.