THE NEED OF REST
The bliss of an unbroken sleep.
THOS. W. PARSONS.
To go in the wrong direction delays our journey and brings fatigue, but
that fatigue may teach us needed lessons.
Man seeks happiness through outer things, hoping to find it in wealth,
excitement, travel, self-gratification, and in countless other ways
that the age-long experience of men have proved to be ineffectual; but
he usually forgets that the wellspring of happiness is within. Long
before Solomon had announced that “this also is vanity and vexation
of spirit,” men had observed that riches do not bring happiness;
that excitement wearies us, that travel is unsatisfying, and that
gratification of the senses ends in exhaustion.
At last, in despair of satisfaction in the world, we have accepted
the teaching that there is no rest on this side of the grave. We have
even learned to glorify strain and the strenuous life as natural
and desirable. At best, men have thought of rest as something that
concerned the body, and have confounded it with sleep and inaction.
If we think we have important work to do, we say, “We have no time
to rest,” as if any work would be laid upon us that ought to prevent
us having rest. Draught horses have been bred for centuries for the
sole purpose of work, yet a wise driver never overloads nor overworks
his horse. He sees that it is comfortably housed, well fed, and has
its needed rest. Shall we think that the Spirit of Life has less
consideration for man than man has for the horse? That were in effect
to say that man were greater and wiser than that which caused man, and
which man has spent the ages trying to understand.
When we stop to think of this we can see how foolish it is, but we
seldom stop to think until something “happens” that stops us. We go
on from day to day thinking that we have no time to rest. This state
of mind, which leads to trouble, is possible only because we do not
understand what rest is, nor how easy it is to have it. We ordinarily
seek rest only after we have become exhausted.
When we have wearied ourselves with worry, useless exertion, and
fretting, or with envy, hatred, or malice; when we have bent all our
energies to some low aim or selfish purpose; when we have broken nearly
all of Nature’s laws and are called upon to pay the penalty, we seek
a physician. A man sets a shifting standard of wealth as his goal,
and strains to attain it; he eats improperly and in great haste, his
thoughts filled with the problems of the market; he is forever on the
alert for any advantage that he may take of his fellows; he cannot
endure to have another reap an advantage that is denied him; he is
envious of every bit of success that, passing him by, goes to another;
he makes of his life one fierce round of money-getting. Then, perhaps
before attaining his goal, perhaps after reaching it, he discovers
himself a physical wreck, and hastens to his physician, seeking
external means to cure that which has its root in internal conditions;
asking the man of drugs to “minister to a mind diseased.” To the
nervous, worried, hurried person, from whatever cause, the physician’s
advice is generally the same—“Take a complete rest,” meaning thereby
that all work be given up and inaction take the place of activity. When
circumstances allow it, we try to follow this advice, but it usually
results in boredom and impatience at the lost time; when circumstances
do not allow the inactivity, we get discouraged and complain of life
as a series of mysterious, unjust happenings. The physician’s advice
proves a mockery and we become listless and discouraged.
We hardly ever seek our rest from moment to moment; for we continue
to look upon it as something we shall find after our work is done. The
laborer, the merchant, and the professional man think of the end of
the day as resting-time, just as the busy housewife does. It matters
not how much we may love our work, we expect to be exhausted by our
efforts before the day is over. We feel hurried, anxious, fretted, and
overworked all day long, and comfort ourselves with the prospect of
rest at night. And all the time we might rest and never find the day so
short as to cause worry, nor the hours so long nor the work so hard as
to tire us.
It is only when we are burdened with distracting cares that we get
tired by what is a joy to us. The true artist wants no eight-hour day;
he laments only that daylight fades so soon. When we are doing only
what we love to do, and doing it well, we run and are not weary, we
walk and do not faint.
Of late years the trainers of athletes have recognized this—they think
it more important to keep the men buoyant and fresh than to increase
the muscles at the risk of bringing them “stale” to the day of
contest. They insist that the men shall not exhaust themselves at any
time before the race.
Exhaustion shows either that we have been doing the wrong thing or
doing it wrong, and kindly Nature reproves us with the loss of Sleep.