Is This an Antidote to Exhaustion?
This article first appeared on Simple Soulful Words
- my weekly letter for your soul sharing words of comfort, strength & spiritual support for the messy emotional realities of life.
It’s adapted from my book Cycles of Belonging.
In these discombobulating times we’re living through where we’re each of us dealing with our own personal issues and emotional pain and the cultural and environmental challenges we’re collectively navigating … it’s no wonder so many of us are exhausted.
No wonder we’re bone tired…
…Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually drained.
How can we deal with all of these pressures in a meaningful and authentic way?
There’s a movement building around rest; about turning your back on grind culture, purposefully slowing down and tending to your soul.
In this way, rest is considered an act of resistance against the pressure to indulge in mindless consumerism and the hustle and soul-destroying grind of capitalism.
And yes, I’m all for rest. For stopping doing - if and when possible - and simply being. Whether through sitting and daydreaming or restful practices such as Yoga Nidra.
BUT …
I’m now going to apparently contradict what I’ve written above, by sharing these words from the poet David Whyte, which were said to him by his friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast:
You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.
Actually, I’d say we need both. Rest enables us to live wholeheartedly.
Rest is essential in modern life and it’s an act of resistance to help us reclaim our colonised bodies, minds and souls from the invading forces of patriarchal capitalism.
So I’d say let’s make space for both in our daily life (when and where and however we can).
Wholehearted living
Living wholeheartedly is about committing to your life and committing to yourself, with kindness.
As writer and research professor Brené Brown’s opens her book The Gifts of Imperfection:
Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’
Living wholeheartedly asks you to consciously and coherently engage with yourself and the world, to trust yourself to do the best you can at the time, to be alive to what you’re experiencing, and to find the courage to be compassionate with yourself through it all.
For it is entirely possible to move through life metaphorically asleep and disconnected from your needs and desires, rushing around on autopilot.
It’s very easy to get up, dash around attending to life admin, running a household, working, cleaning, engaging in scheduled so-called down-time (such as going to the gym, attending a yoga class, seeing friends), looking after other people, perhaps acting as your children’s social secretary and chauffeur, cramming some food into yourself when you can and then collapsing in front of a TV screen or mobile device and dragging yourself off to bed for a fitful night’s sleep … before getting up and starting the whirlwind all over again.
Do you recognise your life in any of that?
Even if you have a more leisurely life, activities which you once enjoyed can become routine through repetition and familiarity, and while your body goes through the motions your mind has flitted off elsewhere and you’re not present and committed to your experience.
The demands, responsibilities, distractions and technologization of twenty-first century living can leave us feeling like we’re stuck in a perpetual Groundhog Day, as in that ‘90s movie where the main character relives the same day, again, and again and again… No wonder this phrase captured the popular imagination and entered the lexicon as a way of describing a life which is monotonous and unfulfilling.
How would it be to engage in a different way?
Could you accept the invitation of the waking hours of the daily cycle and be where you are and fully live the life you’re experiencing now? While the cycle of the breath invites you to be present in the moment, the cycle of the day invites you to be present in today and to be attentive to the experience of being you, now, and to the life you are living.
Let go of the goals once in a while. Step off the toxic-masculine linear grind of constant growth and achievement and tune into the Sacred Feminine presence of all the cycles which are going on within you and around you: breath, circadian, menstrual, lunar and solar.
How about being present with today? Where are you today? What are you doing today? How are you feeling today? What challenges are arising for you today? Who are you today? What are you grateful for today?
The simple act of checking in with how you feel, and reminding yourself of what’s important to you, is healing. You don’t have to write it down; you could just sit and reflect for a little while.
Being present to today opens you up to possibility and potential.
And then you might like to awaken to the question: how do I want to live my life? How can I live wholeheartedly?
Your wild and precious life
You may well have come across these words by the poet Mary Oliver, from her poem “The Summer Day”:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
It’s often shared in personal development circles as an exhortation to embrace life and to follow your dreams and to achieve and do and grasp after every opportunity. And yes, that can be a path you wish to take.
But the poem goes on to say:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention [...]
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
So, please don’t feel a wholehearted, fulfilled life must be one that has ticked everything off a very long bucket list, or one where you’ve reached the top of your game professionally, unless that truly does call you and make your heart sing.
Maybe you wish to fill your “wild and precious life” with strolling in the fields and paying detailed attention to the wildlife around you. Or talking to trees. Or painting and creating. Or just sitting and listening to the birds. Or being present for your kids and building a nurturing home life. Or volunteering to help others.
Living wholeheartedly invites you to engage with life as it is now and to let go of comparisons. To be grateful for the good you have in your life, but not to shy away from the challenges and wrongs that need to be righted, both within your life and within the collective. And it invites you to commit to yourself and to your life and to add your unique tone to the great choir of life on Earth.
How would it be to live like this? To embrace yourself, all the imperfections you perceive in yourself and undoubtedly exist in the world around you, to get out of your own way and to say yes to life, with an open heart?
This is the gift offered to you by your daily life. Will you accept it?
Until next time … may you live wholeheartedly, guided by the whispers of your soul,
Stella x
