I Can’t Just SiT
The picture above is from a cemetery near my home that is favored by locals as a wonderful place to walk. It has beautiful trees, flowers, and a lovely little pond all located next to a saltwater inlet. It is peaceful, serene, and a great place to spend ten minutes walking and restoring my energy.
I was going through there on Mother’s Day when I noticed this gravestone. I have walked by this easily 150 times and may have noticed the name Sarah Wells, a woman who died in 1873. What I never noticed before was the “Mother at Rest” title at the top. Initially, I was going to send this photo to my sisters in a text message with the caption, “This may be the first place I actually get any, too!” While my sisters would have received this with the intended humor, the picture reminded me how being “productive” became a part of my identity.
So much of how we think about ourselves comes from the messages we receive as kids. The words we hear along the way make their way into our psyche and start to form the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how we make sense of the world. While at first these stories may serve a purpose, over time they can become so much of how we see and judge ourselves that they interfere with understanding what we really need versus what we think we should be doing.
Being Rather Than Always Doing
One of those messages came early and often in my life. My mother, who raised seven children, had little down time. When she would sit and watch TV she was always multitasking. When we were younger, she would do this by folding or mending laundry. As those chores became less, she would spend her time watching TV while knitting. I can still hear my mother’s voice saying, “I can’t just sit.” It was a sense of pride for her that her hands were always busy. It also created an abundance of afghans, sweaters, mittens and hats still handed down within my family. You name it, that lady could make anything out of a string of yarn. For me, however, the interpretation of her message was to never just sit and always be doing something. There was a judgement I imagined around having “idle time.” As a result, until recently, I had a hard time with the concept of just “being” rather than always “doing.”
People who know me well will not be the least bit surprised by this true confession. I am that person who is always described as having “so much energy.” If I had three hours of “free time” I would think of five hours worth of ways to fill it. I always had to be moving, doing, and making things happen. This constant outflow of energy became a huge part of my identity. I took pride in how much I could get done in any given period of time. I, too, could “not just sit.” That was true until I started to realize that my constant need to move and do was robbing me of so much more than it was offering. It robbed me of the chance to allow my mind to wander, imagine, dream, strategize, and solve. Moving and doing are not the same as just being and I needed some real live “being” time in my life.
Separating Habits From Our Identity
Separating habits or judgements from our identity takes intention. I was in the habit of constantly doing something. It helped define who I was – someone who accomplished things and didn’t waste their “free” time. The truth was that it wasn’t serving me. Frankly, it was exhausting as well as depriving me of the time and mind space I needed to really think in the creative, strategic, imaginative way I wanted to.
I intentionally changed that pattern. I schedule time every day in my calendar for “thinking time.” On the weekend, I place at the top of my list “down time.” Somedays, it may only be 15 minutes, but it is time I set aside just to be. To be clear, I do not have 100% compliance with my efforts, but I am way over 50% which has me trending in the right direction.
I am certain that the only way my mother got to watch TV was to fold the laundry while she did it – after all she had a lot of work to do in running our family. That need to multitask at one point of her life outlived its usefulness later in life. It became such a part of her identity, that at 90 years old she still moved those knitting needles, even with her painful arthritic hands, as she shared the 7:00 pm hour with Alex Trebek.
Making Time for “Being”
On Mother’s Day, my time of “being” included walking through the cemetery and enjoying the flowering trees of spring. No podcasts or music in my ears, just me with my thoughts. That is how I was able to see something differently I have passed so many times before - that Sarah Wells, in 1873 finally was given some rest. I sure hope this wasn’t the first time she was able to just be.
