Pains and Joys II: The Art of Resting

I’m not sure about you, but I certainly experience considerable difficulties learning to take a proper break, rest and relax completely.

Yes, I’ve resisted the temptation to get another Blackberry, or one of its less-sinister offspring (like i-phones and the like) despite the fact that everyone on the planet seems to carry one of those. So one would have thought I should find it easier to “switch off” during the weekends, breaks or holidays. But I don’t.

I blame it on the fast pace of life in a place like Hong Kong. Like New York, Hong Kong is a city that never sleeps. The moment I step out of the building where we’re staying, I see scores of people walking at top speeds up and down the escalator, crossing the road (traffic lights become an annoying personality when I’m in a hurry), dodging in and out of queues, checking their phones, Blackberries or i-phones for messages. It’s not exactly the most relaxing picture.

I blame it on the Checklist Tendency in my working style. Like my dear friend Vicki who I worked with at Tearfund, we have both been profiled as the sort of worker who doesn’t feel good about the day of work unless we’ve checked a whole list of boxes for the tasks we’ve done/things we’ve achieved. With such a tendency (called “Achiever” according to Strengthsfinder), I’m always on the lookout for things to do, in order to “tick the box”. So, even when I’m not working on a Viva matter, say on my way down to post a letter, I think of the other 5 things I could also do on the way – turn on the washing machine, take out the rubbish, get stuff from the store, call my friend about dinner tomorrow, text my other friend to thank her for a great dinner last night, whilst also having a think about how to pitch Viva to the lunch party today.

Some people say it’s the inability to live in the present that prevents us from resting or pausing (and a load of other things). So even when I’m supposedly having a nice weekend doing nothing much, my mind involuntarily goes elsewhere, thinking about the coming Monday, or what should we eat for dinner tonight.

It seems like a disease, this inability to live in the present. It feels natural though, and is alluring and comforting to many, especially those of us who like to plan ahead. It feels like a disease because unless I get rid of it, it actually robs me of real life, of real living. If my mind is always in the future, I’m not really living now, am I?

On Sunday night Rob and I went to a retreat centre at the top of a hill on Cheung Chau, an outskirt island about an hour’s ferry ride from Hong Kong Island. We only spent less than 24 hours there, but even 24 hours away from the buzz and bustle of the city helped. We went there to try and quieten down, to spend some time with God – we feel we really need to be guided by Him particularly for our work with Viva. However, I don’t think one needs to have any religious reason for taking a break and doing something like a retreat. Being in a quiet place, away from normality, and practising silence (something I am very bad at) and just reading and reflecting on things, can be really beneficial for your health – physical, mental and emotional.

Again, I know the benefits of doing retreats, but it is so hard to actually get around to doing them. We have decided to put retreat dates in our diary (and book the room), well in advance, as that will help us to keep space for them, and be more intentional in punctuating our lives with full stops. We have found in the past that unless we did this, that months, or even years could pass without taking a retreat.

*a google search will easily find you good retreat places

Pains and Joys

There are several things I’m trying to “achieve” these days. And for many of these things I have had serious doubts about whether they’re achievable (not whether they are in theory, but in my own book). But their importance keeps hitting home, so I can’t quite ignore them.

The first thing is going running. I know the many benefits of it: health (especially when one contemplates the real possibility that one is aging, albeit slowly), de-stressing, and the feel-good-afterwards aspect of it. But I hate it. I hate the sweating, the pain (!), the stitches, the you-will-never-get-very-far sort of mindset I get into as soon as I start running, the head spinning - basically the price one pays for exercising when one is unfit.

For exercise, I prefer playing tennis – it is actually fun, interactive and sociable. There’s excitement and variation as opposed to repetition and monotony. I think we’ll get into our tennis again soon, after we retrieve our racquets from Rob’s parents’ in London. But at my level of skill, I don’t think playing tennis itself will get me fit or healthy, as most of the time at the end of the first 30 minutes of playing I would normally be panting like crazy, and be reminded again that I need to exercise more.

So Rob and I have started running a bit – my kind husband jogs with me all the way from where we’re house sitting (on Caine Road in Central, Hong Kong) to May Road, a route which involves almost constantly running up steep roads (I usually run the first stretch, and then walk-run the others). At 33 degrees Celsius, perhaps that’s another reason why running feels even more strenuous. Rob keeps telling me that it will get better - that the more I run the easier I will find – say after one month.

One month! That’s a long time. I’m not sure if I can do it, even though each time after I’ve done it I feel good and motivated to go running again, at least before my lazier self starts to throw me a thousand excuses.

The second “thing I am trying to achieve”, I suspect, a common issue for many, is taking a proper break. I’ll write about that tomorrow.