Why Do We Resist Rest?
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in the MacEwen house. I’m enjoying breakfast and coffee with my wife, laughing about the crazy dreams we had last night and talking about our wonderful dreams for the day ahead.
And then… my phone rings.
Panic sets in, because I know I have approximately 30 seconds to decide how I will respond before the caller hangs up.
It’s my day off and I was just talking about all the great things I hope to experience today with my wife—yet I’m somehow still drawn towards this ringing phone, like my life depends on knowing who or what is on the other side of the line.
What should I do?
What would you do?
I’ve been developing these boundaries for years, so it’s easy for me now to let calls go to voicemail or wait to reply to text messages and emails when I am practicing sabbath or on holidays. But it wasn’t always this easy for me—and I know far too many people who are unable to stop working or slow down when it’s time to rest.
I find this truth very fascinating because so often these same people are “working for the weekend,” inching their way towards the next vacation or retirement. Surveys have found that 82% of Americans report that they “regularly” spend time daydreaming about vacations, with the average person spending nearly 200 hours a year daydreaming about vacations. That’s a lot of time! The top two reasons people wanted to have a vacation were rest and escape from everyday life.
Everyday, our society is becoming more and more burnt out and evidently craving rest—yet we still struggle to embrace opportunities for rest when they are presented to us.
Keeping in line with my previous blog post about sabbath, I’m going to explore some more ideas of why we resist rest and sabbath, and what I think might need to change for us to embrace healthier patterns in our lives.
“Hurry Sickness”… Yes, It’s Real
Though it might not be a formal medical diagnosis, and I don’t imagine it will be added to the DSM any time soon, hurry sickness is a condition that far too many of us are familiar with. Cardiologists Friedman and Rosenman coined the term back in 1985, identifying certain behaviour and thought patterns associated with poor heart health. In general, people struggling with hurry sickness live in a constant state of anxiety throughout the day and have a feeling of urgency to get things done—even when there’s nothing to do.
Other characteristics of hurry sickness include:
A compulsion to rush through tasks
Interrupting people
Irritability, especially when there’s a delay
Ruminating on your to-do list, even while trying to sleep
Always feeling behind schedule
Always feeling a sense of urgency
These heightened levels of stress can have serious consequences for one’s physical, psychological, and spiritual health.
There is no clear “cause” of hurry sickness, but it likely develops the same as other health conditions: a combination of genetics and environment. It maybe true that some people are genetically more likely to exhibit these signs of stress—however our behavioural responses to these internal cues will have a huge impact on whether hurry sickness develops and is maintained throughout the lifespan.
By practicing regular self-care and establishing boundaries, the effects of hurry sickness can be managed—but I think a true “cure” for this disease will require some deeper transformations within our individual thinking and cultural ideologies that support to this dysfunction.
Our Fatal Flaw
In the survey already mentioned, they identified that our hurry sick society is desperate for “escape.” People are feeling sick and tired of being sick and tired—and I agree! I can relate in some ways to this sentiment. Life is hard, and I grow tired and weary too.
But I don’t find issue with the diagnosis—the problem is found in what society believes the solution is.
Our society has a fatal flaw at the core of its thinking. We tell people to “follow your heart” and “live your truth” thinking that this will lead them to health and happiness… but does that actually lead to good outcomes?
Maybe the problem is that we have been trying to use our human desires as a compass—even while we are feeling “sick and tired”—but we can hardly realize we have been walking in circles for years, never actually getting to where we want to go. This might be a shock to some, but our strongest desires are not necessarily what we actually need. This is where we can get led astray as humans, following our desires instead of wisdom.
Although you might be told by society (even mental health professionals) to “follow your heart,” that isn’t going to lead you to health and happiness. As a matter of fact, the track record of the human heart leading people to positive outcomes is typically not very good.
I think we need to re-learn how to choose wisdom to be our compass instead of our own personal desires—which is why I brought up the topic of sabbath earlier. Sabbath has been a practice for millennia proving to benefit people’s physical, psychological, and spiritual health. I believe the “cure” to our hurry sick culture is choosing to approach sabbath as a core discipline of being a healthy human being—not just a “good idea” for us to practice when we feel like it. We need to choose rest and build our life around it. Sabbath needs to become a “rule of life” for us to follow, instead of us following our desires—which tend to ebb and flow with each passing minute.
Limitations Aren’t a Bad Thing
I want to address another issue that prevents us from embracing rest and sabbath.
Much of Western thinking and ideology disregards the value and significance of the human body. We are conditioned to consider our bodies as simply fleshly vessels for our existence that can be endlessly used, modified, or enhanced to accomplish our own desires. We will pump ourselves full of caffeine to make it through that next meeting, when we probably just need to stop scheduling so many things into a workday. Or we will work ourselves towards burnout, and then talk to a doctor to prescribe medication to help with our stress-induced acid reflux and anxiety. And when we are finally convinced that our body is not “good enough” to accomplish our goals or meet our desires (or the desires of others), we will resort to non-essential medical procedures to “improve” upon our human condition.
Don’t you think our bodies deserve more credit than this?
Maybe we need to stop trying to “bulldoze” our body’s signals whenever it tries to communicate to us needs or limitations?
Maybe we need to consider our bodies as precious, intelligently designed, and full of inherent worth and value?
Maybe we need to stop trying to conform our bodies to the patterns of this world, and accept our human limitations and shortcomings as beautiful, humbling reminders that everyone falls short of the unattainable goal of perfection?
Maybe we can begin to see the goodness inside our human design, instead of fighting it?
We resist the idea of rest because we despise the finite nature of our existence. We all have a need for significance deposited inside our human hearts, which is a mark of our Creator and His belief in our value and worth. To satisfy this need, we seek out experiences where we can transcend human limitations and feel connected with the Infinite One.
Believe it our not, Christianity has a practice that fills this void in our hearts, without sacrificing our health. It’s called sabbath. I believe that we will experience deep satisfaction when our bodies are loved and cared for through the practice of sabbath.
The Last Objection
Lastly, I want to address a final excuse I hear when it comes to rest and sabbath.
People might be thinking, “That’s great for you, but it’s just not for me. I don’t have the time for it, and I can’t just cut things out of my life. There is work to be done and bills to be paid. Maybe one day I’ll have a rhythm of sabbath—but not today.”
Sabbath is sometimes seen as a “white privilege” practice, only for those who are wealthy and privileged enough to partake. And I have no issue acknowledging the reality that assessment is based on. The idea of taking time off from work—a common (if not primary) means for meeting our financial needs—is reserved for those who can afford to not work every opportunity they can.
But wouldn’t it make more sense to resist the systems of oppression that perpetuate this reality than to resist the gift of sabbath for our lives?
My invitation for the skeptic is to consider which side of the battle you want to be on, and my hope is that you will choose to resist the systems and ideologies that lead us away from good health outcomes and embrace the option for a slower and more restful way of life.
If you struggle with boundaries and rest, or if find yourself in constant states of anxiety throughout your week, hurry sickness could be a problem you want to address. Consider reaching out to our office for a free consultation, or you could book an appointment with us online.
