The Maverick Bluestocking Learns about Rest

How can I pass up an invitation to write about Alfie? Today’s blogging prompts are:

1) How your energy affects your pets (and vice versa)

2) How do you communicate with your pets or help others to communicate with theirs?

I often post about my Golden Retriever and he has his own Facebook page with lots of fans. He is naturally very wise.

Funnily enough, in the last few days I’ve been thinking and speaking quite a lot about a rather controversial subject. You could call it ‘doing less,’ ‘having a break,’ or ‘resting.’ It seems to me that the society we find ourselves in right now is more demanding than it has ever been. Even on our days off, we are supposed to be really busy, doing activities, taking the family out or maintaining the house. And even if we stay on the sofa all day, it’s not enough to watch mindless TV or do the crossword; we have to devour an entire box-set!

Following on from yesterday’s post about invisible illnesses and fatigue, I’d like to introduce a different idea. We need to learn to rest. Not just sleep and not just an hour or so in front of the TV before bed. But proper rest. Athletes know about rest because it is built into their training programmes, but I am having trouble finding any other category of person who doesn’t think they are being lazy when they do nothing.

Sometimes, however, we need to do nothing. We need to drop our plans, sometimes for quite a while. We need to let go of the driving and striving and just be. Some of us are lucky enough to have the decision made for us, usually by our health. How much harder would it be to make this difficult decision for yourself? Could you ever say, ‘I need to do nothing for a while’?

Where does Alfie come into all this? Well, he knows better than anyone how to follow the advice from Martha Beck that I am trying to incorporate into my life:

Rest until you want to play, and play until you want to rest.

‘Play’ being, by the way, how we should regard our work. I can feel deep in my being that this approach is very wise, and I know I could benefit from living more like this because of the resistance I experience when I contemplate the idea of resting until I want to play and then playing until I want to rest.

That voice that feels like me, but isn’t me (here is Richard Wilkins explaining more) tells me that I am being lazy when I put my feet up, when I take extra time for reading, journalling or meditation. When I am not driving and striving, not ‘doing my best,’ I am being irresponsible. Things could go wrong and then I would have only myself to blame.

Alfie doesn’t have that voice in his head. He is the best rester I know. He rests gently aware, attention wide open, ready to play when he feels like it or when an opportunity arises. He is always content and he is always fully himself and fully alive. If I want to know what being yourself and living to the max look like, I have only to look at Alfie. He enjoys every moment of his life, but a lot of those moments are spent lying flat on the ground (or on the sofa or even my bed if he can manage it) doing absolutely nothing.

I’ve learned a lot from Alfie’s peaceful and joyful energy. I am learning a lot about resting at the moment because my health is giving me some tough love and demanding that I do more of it. And I suspect that this is a subject I will have to continue to contemplate, research and share about. Thanks Alfie for your great example!

If you’d like to learn from Alfie’s wisdom too, why not ‘like’ his page here?