When I was young and complaining about having nothing to do, my mom would tell me, “Hush up. Your Great Gramma Lena started bowling in her 80s.”
My youthful brain would think to myself: “What’s that got to do with anything?”
My mom, as if hearing my thoughts, would continue: “She worked the farm into her 80’s, but that didn’t stop her trying new things. She was always doing something new. She was a character.”
Okay mom.
But she was. There’s a picture of her that used to scare me: Up on a ladder, in overalls, with a bandana on her head, annoyed that someone has interrupted her work. Not looking grandmotherly at all.
Whether you live an intentional or unintentional life, it fills up quick. Whether you work a farm or sit on your butt and complain, you build a world around you; you create a nest. That nest is mostly comfortable. It is our inclination to stay in it.
Partly exhaustion, partly reward.
Ahhh. I made it.
The proverbial EZ chair at the end of the day.
And there we sit, TV, phone, scotch, tea, whatever. Not all that proverbial.
I deserve thisssssss.
But there’s something in the human DNA that doesn’t allow this to be entirely restful, as if some of the thatchwork of the nest juts out, pokes into us. Prickly by design.
Or, at least, that’s the way my nest feels.
And Gramma Lena’s, I suppose.
I love to binge a show as much as anyone else, but it doesn’t last. Something pokes me.
Get up.
If it sounds annoying, it isn’t. It’s not like a child sticking a finger in my ribcage.
Daaaad….
It’s more like a wise, sagelike figure, fully dressed and showered, placing a hand on my sleepy shoulder through the blanket.
It’s a beautiful day.
Love ’em or hate ’em, you know they’re right.
Sometimes, when I’m not completely exhausted, I wander around the house looking for something to do, and everything seems like an excuse. Even reading a book.
Don’t hide from yourself.
It’s not that I don’t deserve to rest; it’s that I want to deserve something else. I want to find another reward, discover a different way to make my body tingle again, to change my tired old thought patterns. To surprise myself.
And being bored, being rest-LESS is almost always the precursor to discovering that thing, to quieting down the world enough to be able to hear the call.
A conjuring, an epigenetic electrical pulse, a soft hand.
Up and at ’em.
Okay, okay.
But I’m not going bowling.
.