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The Work of Rest: Investing in Yourself With a Sabbatical
Reboot your New Year by doing less.
Posted December 31, 2021 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
Key points
- It has become a cultural norm to feel that rest and play are the enemy—they are slothful, guilty pleasures—but our inner child knows better.
- Rest is essential to keeping one's mind and body fertile, creative, and well.
- Everyone is unique with varied needs and circumstances, so all Sabbath moments will look different.
As the New Year approaches, we resolve to be changed—healthier, more patient parents, more present partners, and to embrace a life that fills us with joy and meaning. What if one change could help make all the others possible?
That is what the last year has brought me. And, I hope sharing my story can help make your coming year a little brighter.
Stepping Into the Unknown
For months now, I’ve been on a slow walk back to myself. What I call a sabbatical.
Months ago, I wrote about my decision to embark on this journey. At first, there was a lot of sleeping, a lot of crying, and a lot of asking myself, “What is it that I really want to do with this one precious moment and precious life?” I asked myself the question repeatedly, waiting for an answer that seemed like it might never come.
Other times, a mental craving would pop into my head and say, “I want to paint!” or “Can we dance?” like a buried child within me, learning to trust that maybe this time I would listen to her longings.
It has become a cultural norm to feel that rest and play are the enemy—they are slothful, guilty pleasures—but our inner child knows better. And, when we are not careful, we are gaslighting that child and creating a path to a life of languishing.
When I first started talking to friends and family about the idea of taking a sabbatical, the universal response was a confused, “Well yeah! Don’t we all need a break… but how?” That was often followed by a shrug and lots of blinking and staring.
“What are you going to do?” “What’s your plan for the time?” Baked into their questions was the clear assumption that I should achieve something with my time.
“Maybe a book!?” multiple people suggested.
I wanted to agree. I wanted to promise them something, a product to prove my worth at the end of a period of rest. Some type of tangible evidence that I wasn’t completely wasting my time, and by proxy, that I was not a waste.
I remember perusing the web while on the exercise bike, feverishly looking up TED talks about sabbaticals, and as a lover of words, investigating the term "sabbatical." This term had begun to enchant me, whispering into my ear, and yet I knew so little about it. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the term sabbatical comes from the word Sabbath—the Jewish day of rest. When I learned this, it was like a revelation, so obvious that the answer had always been there. I read the words…
“Daily meditation or worship, observance of the Sabbath, times of pilgrimage, vision quest or contemplative retreat have been integral ways of life for people and cultures to stay tapped into the wellspring of inspiration that continually revitalize their lives.
For the Jewish people, the Sabbath is a time when … for 24 hours we simplify our lives in order to abide in communion, sanctified and blessed with this mysterious presence, remembering, affirming, and celebrating the deep, subtle, and universal dimensions and mysteries of our being that we so easily forget during our busy weekday lives. As the Sabbath ends, we dedicate ourselves to keeping this spirit alive as we launch back into the complexity of our lives and work in the world … (Levey & Levey, p.204)."
Resting in a Busy World
We expect so much of our minds, but they are not meant to be machines, and their highest purpose is not to merely crank out work as instructed but to foster continuous growth, emotional intelligence and foster creative problem solving. And we need rest to keep them fertile.
Armed with this information, I endeavored a new type of conversation—not one where I pitch the idea of taking a sabbatical to my friends and family like the board of the Erin Peavey Institute, where they make all the decisions, but rather that I present this to them as a fact that will soon become a reality they need to adjust to.
Now, when someone would ask, “But what will you do…?” I would smile and answer back, “My one goal is to achieve nothing." This always made them laugh, but how they responded was such a reflection of their values, not mine, and for the first time I was seeing this separately. I remember one friend, Julie, shaking her head chuckling, and saying, "Yes! Sorry. I know. I need to train myself to where every single thing doesn't have to be productive." We laughed together at our shared overzealous, obsession with efficiency, and the ways it has served us but also rob us of life’s joy.
But I also knew that they were right in some ways. That I would need some structure to be able to truly relax.
As I prepared for my own sabbatical with new clarity and intrinsic permission, I learned to watch and listen to myself with new eyes and ears. Each day, I would ask myself, “What fills my cup?” “What lights me up?” “What gives me meaning and stability?” I started to find themes in my own life while I listened to authors and scholars like Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Celeste Headlee, and Greg McKewon.
I thought deeply about what was essential, and found that research shows that universally, humans need rest, play, connection, and meaning; and that things like writing, art, movement, and meditation help us to heal and process our feelings, and then to be able to sit with them better.
With this, I decided on my curriculum—a checklist of sorts. Each day I would, in any order, attempt to complete the following activities.
- Play (e.g., do or create for the sheer enjoyment)
- Relax (e.g., nap, read quietly on the couch)
- Write (e.g., journal, process my feelings)
- Meditate (e.g., sit in stillness and try and empty my mind)
- Move (e.g., bike, walk, swim, just get moving)
Your way of resting does not need to look like mine, and I know how fortunate I am to have had this amazing opportunity to invest in myself.
Each night of my Sabbatical, my husband would ask me a simple, but important question about the day ahead: “How are you going to fill your cup tomorrow?” I always loved that question. So simple, so intuition-based—there are countless things that fill our cups, and they change each day, but at the core, if we can be still enough to listen to our intuition, we know if that thing—activity with friends, art class, writing, project, meditation, morning jog—is something that gives us energy or is something that drains our energy.
Learning to Listen to Our Inner Knowing
This journey back to myself has revealed so much that I had long hidden within me, hidden even from myself. And this has in turn taught me how to listen to my own daughter, rapidly approaching 3 years old. I think of the similarities between me and her, the way we feel emotions deeply and care with our whole being, and how that can make us tired more quickly than others. Now, instead of telling her to toughen up or allowing others to do so, I stand beside her in solidarity to preserve her essence as we navigate what can at times feel like a cruel world together.
We are all unique, with varied needs and circumstances, and I recognize that each person’s period of rest will look different. It may be an hour once-a-week to invest in a creative outlet, a weekend hiking in the wilderness, or simply a few minutes of quiet each morning to reflect. Whatever it is, I hope you can give yourself permission to reboot from these difficult times and find peace within.
In our busy lives—filled with work pressures, navigating the onslaught of daily news, parenting children that have strong wills of their own, and working through our own reactivity—in each moment that we pause, feel present in our bodies, acknowledge the cool breeze, sit to meditate, and focus inward—we create a Sabbath moment.
In these moments, we invite in the loving presence of the Divine within us, we invite an underlying peace that is always available if only we can allow ourselves to reach for it.
References
Levey, J. & Levey, M. (2003). The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation: Ancient Skills for Modern Minds. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
