Restoring Our Souls

We all get tired. There are events in the course of our lives that wear us out. If we are committed to the ideal of good mental and physical well being we will look for opportunities to rehabilitate our selves ... To refresh our sagging energies. The events that sap our vital juices are mostly part of the normal experience of living. Sometimes they are unexpected. At times they are inevitable. An unexpected illness. A heartbreak. Storms. A delayed or cancelled flight. An uninspiring job that wreaks of drudgery. Unsubstantiated dreams. Divorce. Death. 

Stuff happens... and we are forced to look again at the operating assumptions by which we program ourselves. These reassessments are necessary and useful. When life hands us lemons, we need to see the opportunities for the refreshment of our old, thirsty, outdated ideas and insipid attitudes. “Make lemonade!”, someone says. We can, and we should. If we do not, we run the risk of harming ourselves and those closest to us. The unintended consequences of fatigue have the potential of adding fuel to the fire of our "burnout". So how do we avoid these? What can we do to recover from the depletion of our essential energies? Here are three suggestions.

• Relax. Calm down and find time for rest and the rehabilitation of your physical and mental parts. The fatigue that results from inadequate rest wears us out, and eventually tears us down. It depletes our sensory capabilities, and makes us prone to accidents of thought and physicality that jeopardize our own safety, and the safety of those around us. So the good we do ourselves by resting issues to those around us who are impacted by our presence and activities. It is essential therefore, that we become aware of this at home, at work, and in the public spaces that we share.
• Pay attention. There is a tendency to develop tunnel vision when we allow ourselves to become worn out by work, and the frustrations and disappointments that are inevitable in the course of our lives. Tunnel vision is a function of the anxiety that is part and parcel of our being tired and overwhelmed. It keeps us from seeing the other possibilities available to us in the face of mechanisms that fail in our expectations. The voice of Wisdom speaks to us in these circumstances, and hopefully we listen. It tells us to stop and look around. It suggests that we silence that other voice in our heads that keeps telling us there is no other way out. When wisdom gets our attention we begin to take those deep breaths which add needed oxygen to the blaze of the fire of our possibilities. That fire is extinguished when we suffer “burn out”.
• Reboot. Rebooting is the act of shutting down and restarting a computer that gives it a bounce intended to clear its “wedgitude”. Wedgitude is tech slang for “the state of being wedged”... Being stuck as we often say. We all get to that point in our own experiences where our “operating systems” need a wedgitude adjustment. Shut things down for a moment. Give yourself that bounce necessary to face the new challenges ahead. Replace the worn and obstructive pieces of your operation, personal and otherwise, and give yourself reasonable time to “come again”. In other words, reboot! Trying to operate with a “wedgie” in your os (operating system) results in debilitating dysfunction. Avoid system failure. In the words of the Desiderata: “with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world.” So reboot, and carry on. In the midst of our daily lives it is important to find the place of stillness... To be led to the "still waters" where we can experience the restoration of our souls.