i am a doer. i try to fix things. i try to remain active. i try to be in constant motion. stillness feels impossible.
the last couple days, with the excuse of thanksgiving, have been incredibly lazy. to have been so motionless feels strange, but sort of intoxicating, too. not in the intoxicating where you love it and want more and are lost inside yourself in a good way. but intoxicating, like, i cant seem to snap out of it. like, i will talk myself into doing things, but what i really feel like is just laying on the couch and watching "sex and the city" (tbs edited, of course).
what i am learning more about is planned stillness. i think if i accept that i will have a still, slow day... then i am ok. but if i have even the slightest expectation of activity, or interaction or even productivity, and then i dont do anything, i hate myself for being so lazy. which is silly, everyone needs lazy times. but i think in this place i have always been, in this world with so many friends and people to distract and things to do, in the familiarity of all of it... i just expect so much.
i am also realizing that those lazy times, good or bad, feel like escape. complication, overthinking, stress, unknown, all of it... they make me want to just escape.... to find something to focus my mind on which is not so overwhelming. so i find little things, fixed periods of time, where i can just not think.
i talked with some girls the other night about alcoholism and what an escape addiction is. how over-indulging in drinking, drugs, sex, food, work-- can become escapes when we cant cope with trauma or even just cope with life. i think as i enter into this real adult world, and as i grow and experience adult pain and adult decisions (because whether i like it or not, i am an adult), i am beginning to understand so much more about the escape plans. like, i could rationalize them before, i understood logically why they were there and why people planned them and took them... but the motivation, the raw emotion of it, the clawing desperation to be away from whatever is causing the need for escape... i am just getting to touch on. feeling the corners of it. peer over the edge.
whats the balance between laziness and escapism? to be sure, no one can remain "on" all the time. but i dont want to get lost in the escape either... as always, the need to understand balance remains. but i done dwelling on that for now, carrie bradshaw calls....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Kristin-I can really relate to what you write here about laziness, distractions, the active life, and escapism. Something I have learned over the years for myself is that first off, my definition of "laziness" wasn't all that accurate. For me, I attached just "being" vs. "doing" as just that--being lazy. I've found that productivity doesn't always come in the form of motion--which I'm sure you know. I also realized that escapism isn't bad in all of its forms either. Escapism in the context of the "contemplative" life whether still or moving, can be centered solely on our creator. Though a spiritual reality--shifting my thoughts from the things of the world. And that, for me, is what I seek in a world spilling over with illusions that can so easily distract me from the one thing that is most important--loving God. And I definitely "see" this desire in you.
Post a Comment