It’s Saturday. A time when most of us relish the break from work, the extra hour of sleeping in, the savoring of–coffee, family, the morning. It’s a day of the week I especially look forward to right before the holidays, when teaching at an elementary school becomes more and more like herding cats as I try to justify why we “need to take this test” even though we all want (including the teacher) to do something, anything?, else.
What has been happening to me, in the face of all of this work excitement is that my Monday through Friday mornings used to be an intentional reprieve I had to myself. I would wake up earlier than I needed to write or meditate and savor–my coffee, the silence, the new day.
Now, my mornings consist of sleeping in and then immediately getting ready for work. While there is ritual in the coffee, smoothie, lunch preparation of the morning. And I find a sense of deep satisfaction in an organized and well implemented routine of any kind, when Saturday comes around, I find it hard to shut such a routine off.
As someone who wants to practice what she teaches, my hyper-productive, work-to-avoid-myself, put aside writing, Monday through Friday mode of doing that carried into the weekend, has been 1) a little shameful, 2) frustrating, 3) disappointing.
BUT, that’s the part of my brain regurgitating what the healing/wellness space likes to shout at me. You can’t be “well” if you are a little unbalanced.
I would beg to disagree.
First I want to let you know that just because you might be “out of balance” in one area of your life, say working so much you are avoiding your feelings, or falling out of a meaningful routine, doesn’t mean you are not healed enough, well enough…ultimately good enough.
We subscribe morality to things that have nothing to do with how we show up for other people or how we advocate for a change to systems that seek to exploit those who are part of them. We subscribe morality to things like whether or not I drank my smoothie in my car, how often I exercise and if I decided to meditate in the morning.
Sure, these self care practices can shift how you relate to other people, but they aren’t the same as doing the work and actually supporting, in a tangible way, the causes you believe in (say by protesting, canvassing, petitioning). While some wellness spaces may convince you that falling out of your yoga practice, or sleeping in, or playing video games vs. going for a bike ride makes you a “bad” person, we need to zoom out and see the superficiality of such a definition of morality.
Second, we live in a world of both/ and. At any given time, balance in one area of your life might be inbalance in another area. For example, the last few weeks, I absolutely, have been shirking my writing and meditation + coffee routine, but I have been giving myself an extra half an hour to forty five minutes to sleep. My body has thanked me (and so has my immune system). Over meditating in the morning, over savoring my coffee, over writing consistently, was the deep need to get more sleep. I can be both putting a pause on one kind of wellness activity AND still be taking care of myself.
When you start to look at your life and the practices that support you, with a widening lens, you might see that just like all other aspects of an ecosystem, there is a mutability to what can support you at a given time. Just because you aren’t necessarily supporting yourself in the same way as you did two months ago, doesn’t mean that you aren’t still given your mind or your body or spirit what it needs at the moment.
Presence requires you to become aware of the moment you are in. And the moment you are in might ask you to honor a different aspect of yourself than it did yesterday or last week. If sleeping in is what you truly need then sleep in. You are allowed to change your priorities.
You are allowed to change.
Lastly, in the spirit of being well and unbalanced. I want to ask you, “What is wellness anyway?” What it looks like for me to be well, is not what it looks like for you to be well. I absolutely have a tendency to work as a way to avoid how I am feeling. Throwing myself into my work as a teacher has given me an outlet for the worry I carry about my students this year. It also has given me a little reprieve from writing, helping me to address a bit of writer’s block I was experiencing.
Again for me, as long as I am aware of how work can become too much of my life, at the expense of letting myself feel, I can create the balance I need. This has looked like adding embodiment practices to my routine when I get home from work. Massage and gentle movement have been helping me create a safe container to let my feelings from the day bubble to the surface (A good cry can be extremely cathartic and nourishing).
Being “well” looks different for every person and being well in one area might mean you are slightly unbalanced in another area. Let us let ourselves be complex and dynamic. TODAY can be different from TOMORROW and that is okay.
For me, it’s Saturday and while I feel the urge to sleep in and then get right to weekend work, I also am ready to build back in the slow and the savoring. The rest these last couple of weeks has made me feel energized. I have a deep yearning and solid few hours to begin writing again consistently. I want and need that silence just for me. This routine in comparison to my previous one, doesn’t make me better. It doesn’t make me more or less balanced than before. It just makes me human, capable of change. Ready for the weekend.