“Your life is your relationship with yourself.”
—Stefanos Xenakis, The Simplest Gift
Greetings from Scarborough!
This week finds me all snuggled up in my cozy little hotel room in Scarborough on the Northeast Coast of England.
I had all sorts of plans for my time here in Scarborough, including a bus visit to the nearby towns of Kirbymooreside and Thorton-le-Dale. But on my first morning here, after a full English breakfast (black pudding, sausage, ham, eggs, toast, tomato, mushroom, hashbrown & coffee), I went for a lovely long walk along the promenade and the beach, then returned to my hotel room with every intention of working.
Instead, I crawled back into bed (the day was dreary), had a delightful nap, and then stayed in bed, reading for hours! The only reason I crawled back out of bed again (after a cup of tea and cookies) was because I had a hot stone massage booked in the late afternoon.
Heaven!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend nearly enough of my days curled up in bed, reading a book.
In fact, I shall partly blame my Monday of Rest on a non-fiction book I have been reading for the past few weeks. I picked it up in Greece. It’s called The Simplest Gift by Stefanos Xenakis. The tagline beneath the title reads:
“Every day is a gift. Open it. Don’t throw it away.”
My Monday of Rest was a gift to myself. Because the day before—on my Sunday of Travel (which I suspect would exhaust the most experienced of travelers…train, coach bus, train, no train because of high winds, so packed city bus with grumpy passengers, then weary walk to hotel), I’d read a short chapter called “Two of You.”
Here are a few snippets from that chapter:
“You have another self within you,” writes Xanakis. “Your other self won’t complain when things are going badly, but everything will start to get on your nerves. When your self is happy, it won’t tell you, but you’ll love everyone, like when you’re tipsy, but without the alcohol.”
“Your life is your relationship with yourself,” says the author. “And it’s usually the most neglected relationship you have. We don’t take care of our self. We bad-mouth it. We don’t give it credit. Sometimes we are disgusted with it. Imagine your self is your significant other. If you nagged at them all day long, what kind of relationship would that be? They’d have sent you packing long ago.”
“Talk nicely to your self. Smile at it. Feed it well,” advises Xanakis. “Give it eight hours’ rest each night. Buy it books to read. Take it for a walk. Walk with it. Exercise it. Sit with it. Listen to it. It has so much to tell you and it’s so sad when every time it tries to open its mouth, you turn away to the TV, or to social media…”
Or to work.
And on that note, here is another related excerpt from my soon-to-be-released book, Spin, Stumble & Soar; A Little Book of Big Lessons:
#41
Take care of yourself.
Self-care is not selfish; it’s mandatory. If you don’t take care of yourself and your health, you can’t care properly for others. The world doesn’t need more resentful martyrs; it needs happy, kind, and productive people who are wise enough to prioritize their own health. Those are the people who will transform our world.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
—Audre Lorde
Speaking of political warfare, on Sunday morning, before leaving my Newcastle hotel room (cozy would not describe that hotel room, let me tell ya…seedy was more like it!) for my Sunday of Travel, I finally finished a huge work task that I had been chipping away at for weeks during this trip.
I have been working on writing the script notes for the Complacent documentary project. As I have mentioned before in previous blogs, the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund’s Complacent documentary project in development is looking at why 1000 workers die every year in Canada (and thousands more suffer life-altering injuries and occupational illnesses).
As part of this documentary project, we are also looking at why there have only been a handful of criminal prosecutions under West Ray law that was passed in 2004—despite the fact that since that time, there have been more than 20,000 workplace fatalities and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries.
Being a workplace safety advocate is not for the faint of heart. It’s exhausting, time-consuming, and extremely frustrating. But it’s work that matters. That’s why I—and many others—continue to do it. But what I tend to forget, on occasion, is that I have to take proper care of myself, in order to be effective at my work.
In other words, I have to remember my own damn advice!
As for the daytrip to Kirbymooreside? Didn’t happen. Next time! Instead, I thoroughly enjoyed my many strolls around beautiful Scarborough.
Every day is a gift. And sometimes a Day of Rest is the wisest gift we can give ourselves. And sometimes doing less is far more enjoyable.
How about you?
When was the last time you took a full day of rest and did exactly what you wanted to…what your sweet soul asked of you?
—
Previously Published on Pink Gazelle
iStock image
