As we prepare to touch down into another weekend filled with ‘projects’ to tick off, ‘engagements’ to keep and ‘leisure activities’ to cover, don’t overlook the spine that supports all of this activity – rest.
In an age where we can artificially illuminate our lives beyond moonrise, we skew our natural sleep patterns by adhering to odd work shift hours, scheduling recreational pursuits well into the night and being lured by the temptation of digital entertainment, long after our bodies would benefit from simply being tucked into the sheets. Sleep, once a respected commodity, has now been relegated to the backstalls of our life choices.
However, short of returning to the Paleolithic age, we are not about to be forcibly blacked out from 7pm to 7am in the near future (mind you, with all of the current hype that surrounds the Paleo Diet it may not be surprising to see an emergence of a ‘darkness lifestyle trend’) so it’s nice to factor it in for yourself, where possible.
We have fauna in our midst that achieve this brilliantly.
Having said this, I cannot kip for all the tea in China, so rest defined by me, will be a quiet flip of a magazine or the week-end paper – enough time to turn a barking session into a casual shoulder shrug as I catch a glimpse of a teenage bedroom on my way down the hallway.
Finding a patch of peace somewhere, for a short space, is often all it takes to turn an Everest climb of an afternoon ahead, into a pleasant stroll among wild flowers. Even if sleep eludes, or may interfere with your night pattern, time out from the motion of life is a good thing – for us all.
Postscript: I really need to take a leaf out of the two and four-legged creatures under my roof – they all have the art perfected.
Plain and Simple 