No Time To Rest? 06/28/2010
 
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- Article By Lawrence Ko, Associate Director of Arrows With Soul
Socrates said that the unreflective life is not worth living.  

A story was told of a Western adventurer leading an expedition to explore Africa in the beginning of the 20th century.  He had hired a team of local porters to help carry the boxes of his baggage as they move quickly inland, traversing hills and valleys and making difficult river crossings.  After a relentless journey without much rest, the expedition leader found his porters refusing to continue after lunch on the third day.
When asked why they were stalling, as he had promised a handsome reward for their labour, one of the African helpers replied, "we have travelled too quickly, and while our bodies are here, our souls are still left far behind".  Hence they refused to budge till their souls have caught up with them.

What a wonderful reminder of our need to make time to rest, so that our souls can catch up with us.

When we wonder at nature, we realize that even the beasts of the fields and the creatures of the wild instinctively know the rhythms of life and the seasons for their activities, rest and migration. 

Last week, as my family began to feast on the king of fruits, viz., the great durian fruit, it dawned on me that the durian season has come.  In the tropics, where there is no four seasons, the life rhythms of our forefathers used to be governed by the monsoons and things like the durian season.

Even the durian trees, the various fruit trees and plants operate according to the rhythms and seasons of nature... they know the time to blossom and a time to bear fruit.

This morning as my family took time to hike up Bt Timah hill, we spotted a solitary durian tree with a few durian fruits hanging high up on the branches.  However, no amount of staring and wishing will send the fruits hurtling down to earth this morning to satisfy our appetites, as these fruits observe their own rhythms of life... they only fall to the ground at night.

Therein is the crux of the matter when it comes to the importance of rest.  When we take time to rest, we begin to appreciate our inner rhythms and discover the truth of nature and life.  In other words, we begin to reflect on what it really means to be human, and to appreciate what is truth.

A person who is ceaselessly busy and striving after many activities is in danger of losing not only his or her health and mind, but more importantly the soul which is the basis of one's humanity.  Even an animal, a beast of burden, like the proverbial work-horse named "Boxer" in the story "Animal Farm" will crash out without sufficient rest and become a mere digit in a farmer's productivity ledger. 

When a human being is driven hard without adequate rest time to reflect and think, the person is in danger of becoming reduced to the state of being an animal and indeed digitized in someone's idea of productivity.  Such an existence is a pathetic one, and at most a sad picture of a driven life of consumerism, driven along with a herd of ‘dumb, driven cattle... following funeral marches to the grave'.

Take time to rest, my friend, because we need it as human beings who have souls and are capable of reflection, understanding truth and learning to live beyond mere cattle. 

Here's an excerpt taken from the United Nations' Earth Rest Day in 1990 which may encourage us to be more restful, reflective and human:

We who have lost our sense and our senses - our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.

We want to rest.  We need to rest and allow the earth to rest.  We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.

We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simple being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths; for learning how to live again.

 


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