Wasting Time

Something that has become much clearer to me over the years is the fact that for most of us, we "waste" very little time.  Unfortunately, I've always been rather harsh on myself for wasting time and not doing anything "productive" when I could have spent the time accomplishing something.  I've come to realize, though, that most of the time that I've "wasted" by playing games or going for long walks or even doing nothing much at all has been time that I wouldn't have been able to do anything, anyway.  My mental state has been such that what I've needed more than anything else is a rest, and by not forcing myself to "accomplish" anything in particular, I've allowed my brain to focus on something other than the incessant need to be productive and to take a much needed break for myself.

Sometimes it's nice to not do anything productive, to just sit and relax or go for a walk or read something good or even just take a nap.  It can be nice to not have any expectations of ourselves, and to not be disappointed in ourselves for not doing something.  Some of my best days have been days when I've purposely planned nothing at all and I've purposely done nothing at all.  Jigsaw puzzles are a great pastime for those kinds of days, or doing something that doesn't take a lot of brainpower or effort, like window shopping or watching something stupid on television, or watching a favorite old movie one more time.

When all is said and done, our desire to accomplish something seems to be a result of the fact that we want to be remembered, and we want to be remembered in positive ways.  We want people to be impressed with things that we've done, and we want them to be impressed with us for having done them.

The great spiritual leaders, though, have recognized something that is a definite truth:  human beings won't be here forever, and even if we feel that what we've done is lasting, it probably really isn't.  The world will go on and on, and the sun will rise and set without our assistance, as the Talmud reminds us.  I've come to believe that the most lasting legacy that we can leave isn't in material goods or possessions of achievements or successes.  Rather, the most lasting legacy is the love that we can share with others, the caring and compassion that our fellow human beings will carry with them after we share it with them.

While it can feel wonderful to achieve and to produce, it's important that we balance our desire to do so with rest and relaxation so that when we do try to achieve, we're well prepared to follow our path on the long haul.  We're not much good if we're exhausted.  And while we're resting and gathering strength, we can focus on things like writing letters and notes to people we care for, giving them encouragement just by letting them know that someone is thinking of them.  While some people are afraid of wasting time by relaxing and doing nothing, it's completely possible that the true waste of time is trying to carry on without having rested and provided ourselves with the strength we need to carry on.

A Break--A Paragraph a Day

Finally, Christmas break is here.  For most non-teachers, I'm sure this break that we get for Christmas--as well as the more significant break that we get in the summer--seems to be a bit excessive.  After all, we get more than a week off (at this school--other places get two weeks, and colleges get up to four!), which is something that most other people don't get unless they take vacation.  But for me, this vacation is an absolutely necessary element of teaching, and one that if they took it away, I probably wouldn't be able to teach any more.  I suppose this is one way that relativity is obvious--the level of exhaustion that people experience in their jobs is relative--I've had jobs that don't take nearly as much out of me as teaching does, and I haven't really felt any need at all for vacations.  As a high school teacher, though, my levels of exhaustion are much, much higher.  And as I imagine things, my level of exhaustion isn't anywhere near the level that an elementary school teacher reaches constantly, being the main teacher and caretaker for up to 30 or 40 very young children all day, every day.  I love the breaks I get, though, and for the next ten days or so I'm going to do everything I can to relax and recover so that when we start back up, I'll be ready to go until the next break, giving all that I can to try to help a bunch of young people learn certain things that they're supposed to learn.  If I make the most of a break, then I'm helping out the people I'll be in direct contact with after the break, for I'll be much more effective then.  If I didn't get the break, my effectiveness would continue to diminish until it eventually would simply disappear.  So the next time you get a break, don't feel guilty about it, but make sure that you take the time to rest and recover, for the people you deal with after you're back from your break will much appreciate the fact that you've rested and helped yourself to become more patient, more compassionate, and more effective.

Too Much--A Paragraph a Day

Some of my students today told me that another teacher of theirs had assigned them to read a rather long novel over the Christmas break and to write a letter based on that book.  I told them in all seriousness that they should ask that teacher if he understands what "break" means.  We take breaks for a reason, because we're tired and we need to renew and rejuvenate ourselves.  I've known far too many teachers over the years, though, who really have no respect for students' need to actually take a break from school and to be able to spend some time not worrying about assignments or readings or anything school related.  The Christmas break is the perfect time to allow students to unwind and to allow the material we've covered all fall to sink in, to allow their minds to process things that need to be processed without placing any more academic demands on them.  I never have any guilt taking a break, because I know that in the long run, my breaks are going to be make me far more capable of accomplishing what I need to accomplish than working myself to exhaustion or frustration would make me.  I feel very bad for the students, and I also feel bad for people who will never take breaks from their jobs or their families or other obligations.  Rest is sometimes much more useful in many ways than continued effort is, and once we learn this lesson,  we can make our lives more restful AND more productive, and I hope to never deprive myself of rest when it's genuinely needed.

Taking a Rest--A Paragraph a Day

One of the things that I like best in this world is a day when I don't have tons of obligations, when I can look at the weather report and see that we're supposed to be hit with a severe rainstorm that's going to last all day, and I can say to myself, "It's a rest day."  A day with heavy rain doesn't allow for many of the chores and tasks that I normally do around the house, so when it happens, I try to take advantage of the weather and do as little as I can on that day--and it's wonderful when it happens on a weekend.  After all, I spend the whole week working, and my normal tendency over the weekend is to get some work done here, stuff that I can't do during the week because I'm busy at work.  I don't feel that I overwork myself, because I actually enjoy doing many of the chores that I do around the house, but it is nice when nature tells me on a given day that I'm not going to be doing any tasks at all.  Of course, the temptation to do work online then comes up, but I've gotten pretty good at rejecting that sort of thing in favor of a nice nap or some time reading.  We all need rest--that's a given in life, non-negotiable--but many of us are reticent to take the rests when we have the opportunity to do so because we feel somehow guilty, like for some reason we should be doing some work on Saturday or Sunday afternoon simply because.  So I do my best to force myself to rest, to reject the temptation to do some online work in favor of lying down on the couch to nap for half an hour or so.  When we have the chance to rest, we should take it whenever it rears its head--otherwise we risk burning out, and then we won't be helpful to anyone at all in any way at all.

Rainy Days--A Paragraph a Day

It's raining outside right now, and I love it.  I don't really feel a need or desire to go anywhere or do anything, so it's nice just to sit here on the couch and relax and write a few words.  The darkness outside makes the atmosphere in here more intimate, more welcoming, more comfortable, and I try to take advantage of that feeling by pulling a throw over me and doing something like this that doesn't require any physical output from me.  It's nice to rest, especially when the world outside is telling me that it's a good time to rest.  It makes it easier to do, and easier to enjoy.  I've always loved rainy days--sometimes I go running in the rain, sometimes I go for a walk, and sometimes I just sit inside and enjoy the coziness of being warm and dry while the weather is dark and cold.  I find that I'm often much more creative when the weather changes regularly--I've lived in places where it's been sunny for weeks at a time, and in those places I never really feel the creativity well up in me as it does in places like this.  Perhaps it's just my body going with the flow of the weather, with its ups and downs and highs and lows.  I feel very privileged to be able to spend rainy days inside a warm and dry home, and I hope to keep appreciating them for as long as I possibly can while I'm still here in this body on this planet.

Summer Break--A Paragraph a Day

When I was younger, it was easy to imagine that my teachers had a nice vacation every summer.  After all, it's a long time off, isn't it?  It's more than eight weeks straight, and most people are lucky to get a couple of weeks in a row.  Now that I'm a teacher, though, I understand just how necessary those breaks are, both for teachers and for students.  Learning takes a lot of work, and people--especially young people--get extremely burned out after eight or nine months of classes.  Right now, for example, we have a few weeks left of class and my students are having a hard time sticking with it.  My colleagues are all walking around exhausted, even though the year isn't quite over yet.  It makes it very clear to me just how important rest is in our lives--without it, we can pretty much never work to our full potential, and achieve the things that we need to achieve.  Rest is part of an important part of the balance between achieving and reinvigorating ourselves, and we need to make it part of who we are.  I have summer break coming up, and the most important part of it for me is using it to rejuvenate, to help myself to be a more effective teacher whenever I'm in the classroom.  I know what it's like to burn out, which is going to happen when we don't make sure that we rest, and I do everything I can to keep burnout at bay.  If we don't rest, we become less effective and less happy with who we are, so it's important that we be sure that we do rest when we have the chance to do so.

Naps--A Paragraph a Day

I think that I'm kind of addicted to naps.  I don't take a whole lot of them, which I find to be a shame, actually, but they are one of the most important parts of my life.  I love laying down (or even just reclining) with the intent of sleeping for a little bit, closing my eyes and letting the world slip away for a few minutes.  I almost never sleep more than ten or fifteen minutes, but my naps add a wonderful element to my life.  They're easily one of my favorite things, as they help me to recharge in reinvigorate so that I can face the tasks I have to accomplish with more energy and a clearer mind.  As always, I find it wonderful that one of my favorite things in the world doesn't cost me a cent--it consists of simply closing my eyes and relaxing and letting sleep take over for a few minutes.  So much of life is like that--the truly important things, the truly wonderful things, generally don't cost us anything at all except a little time and perhaps a little effort.  When we grow to love the simple aspects of life that feel so amazing and that help us so much, then we can live our lives as grateful people who know the value of those simple things, and who are willing and able to appreciate them and recognize the value that they bring to our lives.

A Day of Rest--A Paragraph a Day

I really wanted to go for a run or a bike ride today.  It was a beautiful afternoon when I finished work, and I could just imagine how nice it would have been to go out into the day and enjoy the weather and the warmth and the breeze.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be--my body was telling me that it was a rest day, a day when I should allow my body to recover from the runs and the bike rides of the past few days and weeks, and I've learned over the years to pay attention when it tells me such things so that I don't injure myself by carelessly running when my body was telling me it needed a rest.  So I stayed home and did some other things, and that was fine--our bodies need rest, especially when we use them regularly, and rest is an important part of any life lived fully.  Resting gives us a chance to reflect and to recover and to even build up some strength so that the next run (more than likely tomorrow afternoon) will feel even better.  Rest helps muscles to recover so that they don't hurt us the next time we run--without rest, we keep working our ways towards depletion, and that's not really a good place to be going.  So I respect the rests and my body's need for them, for I really do want to take care of this body that's been such a great gift to me for a very long time.

Work to Be Done--A Paragraph a Day

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things
are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it--not a doubtful sense,
such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation,
but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been
done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

John Ruskin


I like to work.  It helps to give me a nice feeling of achievement, of accomplishment.  Helps.  My sense of achievement usually doesn't come from the work itself, but the ways that I've put myself into the work to get it done, and hopefully to get it done well.  Sometimes I'm much more relaxed while I'm working than I am when I'm not doing anything.  I never want to get to the point at which I only want to be productive, but I don't mind liking the feeling when I have it.  It's very easy, I think, to allow work to overwhelm us, to take over our lives, basically, and I never want that to happen to me either.  I like work because I keep it in a balance--just enough work balanced with just enough rest balanced with just enough recreation.  It's a delicate balance to keep, of course, but one that's necessary.  After all, there's always work to be done, and we do it better when we come at it from a place of peace and balance rather than overwhelming ourselves with just another task to be done.  I like working, and I hope that I never stop working.  But I also hope that I never make work the center of my world, for that would be a very sad center when all is said and done.

A Time to Rest--A Paragraph a Day

Today was a restful day.  I didn't do a whole lot, as the weather outside wasn't amenable to outdoor activities, and I had that day off from work.  I did a few chores and tasks, I played a few games of chess online, I went for a run on the treadmill, I read, I listened to music.  I didn't accomplish a whole lot, and that's okay.  I needed a day with nothing really going on, with out any stress of getting a particular task finished or achieving anything specific.  It was very nice just flowing with the day, and sometimes I wonder if that's what life is supposed to be like--not worrying about accomplishment or pleasing other people, but doing what the day brings along and doing our best at it and trying to enjoy it.  I think that on the day I day, I'm going to think back much more fondly on those days that I spent simply being, and less fondly on those days that were stressful and annoying.  Sure, there's a sense of pride to be had when we accomplish certain things or get other things done, but who knows if our goal in life should be to learn how to simply be,  rather than learning always how to do.  Our cultures value the latter, though, so that's what we tend to focus on, never even thinking that we may be doing something that's more harmful to us than slowing down, resting, and being mindful of all the gifts that are part of our lives.

Quiet Afternoons--A Paragraph a Day

It's really quite fascinating to me just how nice quiet afternoons at home have become for me.  There was a time when I wanted to be out doing something, when I wanted to be active, when I felt I was wasting my time if I wasn't actually doing something.  But these days, some of my most pleasant moments come when I choose to stay home in the afternoon and read or play chess or color or draw or write.  I still love being active and doing things, but I've reached a point at which balance is very important, too, and I really like being at home, doing nothing, while outside the world keeps going on and on without me playing an active role in it.  I wouldn't want to do it all the time, of course, as I'm sure the charm would wear thin, but as long as I do balance staying in on a quiet afternoon and just relaxing with the other approaches to life that I tend to take, then I'll be fine.  Such afternoons stir appreciation for the home I have to relax in, for the money I have to maintain the home and my lifestyle, for the opportunity even to just slow down and be for a few hours.  It's a privilege that not everyone in the world is able to enjoy.  Quiet afternoons can give us some of our best moments if we can be sure to actually enjoy and appreciate them without feeling that we should be doing something else.