The Challenge of Relaxation

The past few weeks have put me back in close touch with a familiar, unpleasant emotional state:  stress.  It's getting to be the end of the school year, which is always a fun time but also brings with it a lot of Things That Must Get Done Immediately.  At the top of my list have been 23 narrative progress reports, one for each student in my class--an endeavor that is time consuming, to say the least.  Close behind that is the realization that I have exactly three days between my last day of school and when I leave for Israel, and one of them is Shabbat--not a whole lot of time to get ready!  Then, there are all the small-yet-significant items such as student assessments, work meetings, and closing down a classroom that has accumulated a year's worth of papers and other random items.  So, I've spent the better part of the past two weeks alternating between frantically trying to stay on top of things at work while also attempting to tackle some pre-trip preparations.  The result has been a near-constant knot of stress in my stomach and frayed emotional ends...and, as this past Shabbat approached, I thought, "I CANNOT afford to take 25 hours off!"  For the first time in a long time, I found myself resenting Shabbat.

At the root of this are two core beliefs that underpinned my eating disorder and my general tendency to be very, very hard on myself:

1)  You earn your worth through what you do.
If I wasn't actively engaged in some productive activity, if I wasn't constantly giving others the impression that I was hardworking and dedicated, then I would lose my right to claim those adjectives.  In order to be liked/admired/considered valuable, I must always be doing something visibly useful.

2) Relaxation is an indulgence.
If there was one word that would turn me off in an instant, it was indulgence.  I believed wholeheartedly that indulgences were for people who had no willpower, that relaxation was for people too weak to push themselves.  I, on the other hand, was a champion of self-denial who found some degree of satisfaction from forcing myself to work/study/exercise when others said, "I've had enough."

After years and years spent working on shedding these core beliefs, I've considered myself pretty much divorced from them...and yet, as this past Shabbat neared and my stress level rose, I found them creeping back into my line of thinking.  But I've worked really hard to learn how to enjoy Shabbat, and I did not want to lose my ability to give myself over to the spirit of those 25 hours.  I went back to some of the writings about Shabbat that I've collected over the years, and came across two that helped me refocus on the meaning of Shabbat:

"It is a day in which we abandon our plebeian pursuits and reclaim our authentic state, in which we may partake of a blessedness in which we are what we are, regardless of whether we are learned or not, of whether our career is a success or a failure..."
--Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

and...

"Master of the world, let me merit the joy and freedom of the holy Shabbat, and let me nullify the enslavement of the days of the week.  I pray that my mind will be completely settled, without any confusion at all--and that on the holy Sabbath no thoughts of labor and business, nor any worry or trouble, will enter my mind.  Rather it will be in my eyes as though all my work is done.  Then I will have truly attained the rest and pleasure and joy of the holy Sabbath."
--Reb Natan of Breslav, Likutei Tefilot 2:13 

What I learn from these quotes is that Shabbat is a time for me to separate myself from doing and concentrate on being.  In those 25 hours, I get to believe that it's not what I do that makes me valuable, it's who I am.  And although that might be challenging to accept, it's also critical for maintaining a healthy attitude toward myself and toward life.  For sure, it was challenging this week for me to say to myself, "For the next 25 hours, I'm done with work.  There is nothing I have to do.  I get to just be."  But I managed, and let me tell you--if ever there was a week when I needed Shabbat, it was this week.  A day of putting away the to-do list was exactly what my body and mind required.

I know that Shabbat can be challenging because it bumps up against those eating-disordered core beliefs that we cling to so tightly.  Yet, to be able to lean into that window of time when we simply are who we are, is so precious and vital to recovery, and to life.  I hope that we all can begin to release ourselves from the pressures of constantly producing and give ourselves that chance every week to relax and recharge.