trusting spirit (and yourself) enough to rest
For the sake of this piece… ‘spirit’ can be whatever that is to you. Spirit, the Universe, God, Allah, etc.
After the spider weaves her web, she hangs in it. She rests, she acknowledges her hard work and she allows her prey to arrive. She trusts. She’s patient. And when the web is destroyed by water or wind or human, she doesn’t give up, she doesn’t cry over what was lost… she rebuilds her home again and again. Spiders are wanderers… adaptable and resilient. Not only does the spider trust in spirit but also herself. She allows herself to enjoy the results of her hard work.
Spider’s medicine to you is to allow yourself some restoration and rejuvenation. When you’re ready to get back to work, the work will be ready for you.
Somewhere in my 20s, I developed this complex in my mind that if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t worthy. The merits of hard work were instilled in me at a very young age, as I’m sure is the case for most of us. And it’s not that they’re wrong, just maybe that we learn them in a way that isn’t totally beneficial for our well-being. After all, balance is everything.
I reached a point where if I ever slept in, it ruined the rest of my day. If I wasn’t productive in some capacity, I felt a subtle and deep self-loathing. It took a long time for me to learn the merits of rest. Eventually, this mindset spiraled out into self-sabotaging behavior: actively sleeping in instead, letting the depression of not being productive and fear of failure debilitate my daily life, scrolling on social media for hours to start my day, not eating until I had to go to work, etc. Nothing that out of the ordinary, I suppose, but sooner or later, your body speaks to you and stops you from continuing these behaviors. This way of living for me led to a lot of anxiety, but I also think it developed out of anxiety too.
Learning to re-parent yourself is essential to a peaceful adulthood. Instead of hating myself for sleeping in, I simply found discipline and boundaries with myself. For example, I knew working an evening job wasn’t for me anymore, and that even if I had one, I knew that I would feel better if I at least had a day beforehand. I’ve often struggled to find routine, my life circumstances often changing… so much so that I started to realize I continued to change it myself just to throw myself back into the chaos that prevented me from going deeper into what I truly wanted. Fear of failure and perfectionism will be your worst enemies if you don’t learn how to work with them, but you are more than capable of learning.
Self-discipline is not easy and no one should pretend it is. For me, it was so much easier to let myself down than to let others down. Knowing people were depending on me drove my work. Even my day job would take priority over my well-being as well as my passions. I knew this was no way to live and that if I continued down this path of putting everything and everyone else before me, that I would grow old to be full of regrets and resentment — so I chose differently.
You can’t just snap your fingers and hope everything has changed. I wish. Everyone says, “I’ll start tomorrow.” I told myself that a thousand times. The key is to hold yourself accountable in the process and to make different decisions from old patterns. Sometimes that decision is rest. Sometimes that decision is pushing through the work so that you’ll be able to enjoy your rest, knowing you did what you promised yourself vs. putting it off to the next day.
Self-awareness is a powerful tool to growth and bettering yourself, your life, and your relationships. But it must be paired with action, or else it just becomes your comfort zone. For example, I was well aware of all of my hindering patterns, missteps in communication in my relationships, and what it took was being aware and present in the moment so that when opportunities to do differently arrived, I actually chose differently. This means that instead of letting myself sleep in, knowing that I will feel worse if I do, that I don’t “force” myself to wake up early, but that I make a promise to myself to be up early on the weekdays, and that way, when I want to sleep in on Sunday… I don’t feel guilty about it.
This doesn’t mean be a workaholic and force yourself to do things you don’t want to do. There is an important balance to find. An ebb and flow to what our bodies are asking for vs. what we’re programmed to feel we “need” to do (usually for the approval of someone else, ie. a parent). This deeper work takes a lot of shedding of beliefs and ideas and requires discernment of what it is that we truly desire vs. what it is that we feel we should do or desire based on some one or something else.
Covid, while being a horrific burden to us all in varying ways, offered many of us one huge reprieve in the beginning: rest. Some people couldn’t handle it, some still worked, some desperately needed the rest and had to work anyway (hi), and some people reveled in it. While it all impacted us differently, to me, it was an eye-opening opportunity for us all to see how overworked we are as a society in America and where our minds are. This isn’t a choice for most, of course, but it’s also an issue that goes deeper. It’s no secret why we’re so overworked, as everything is about monetary gain and working hard to keep our wheels turning so we can essentially keep those above us wheel’s turning as well… I do not say this to undermine the harmful realities of a pandemic that has impacted millions of lives, but I also see this as spirit communicating for us all to slow down for the betterment of ourselves and for the planet in multiple ways.
I was frustrated with how quickly so many people allegedly “wanted to get back to work.” I say allegedly because I think part of this is various programs we’re integrated with, including overworking. To me, this was a huge exposure of our diseased and overworked society (there are many, many layers to this which I cannot cover all of here). Of course, many people love their work and find fulfillment in it, like to earn money, need to provide for their families… that’s all well and good. But you probably know the people I’m referring to, some of them being the ones who protested for our “freedom” not to wear a mask, completely dismissing another part of our reality.
I’m getting off topic, but the key takeaway is: enjoy your rest. And if you don’t enjoy your rest, examine why you don’t enjoy it — and do what you need to do to enjoy it. When people are afraid to slow down, that tells me there are many other things going on inside that they don’t want a single moment to be aware of. One of our necessities in life is to heal, and while I don’t want to rest in the comfort zone of action-less self-awareness, I acknowledge how important this self-awareness is to moving our lives where we want it to be.
Know that you deserve a break. You deserve to rest… You are not a machine, no matter how hard they try to convince you that you are. Learn from the animal messengers around you. Sure, they rest more than any human needs to or should, but they are a wonderful reminder of presence. Remember the spider… working when necessary before she enjoys her rest.