Today was a tough day for our cat Artie. He had to go to the vet and get a shot; he doesn’t like shots. When he got home he curled up on his blanket and went to sleep for hours. I checked on him a couple times and he seemed to be enjoying his recovery. 

We all have tough days every once in a while. When they come sometimes the best course of action is to let go and rest. When playing hard you need to give yourself time to recover. No one can play hard all the time, eventually we need time to rejuvenate and refresh. When we don’t rest we wear ourselves down and we become even less effective than we want. 

But the work piles up, the emails arrive, the to do items compile and the pressure of what has got to be done builds. When weary it can almost seem counterproductive to step away because while you are gone more work piles up. And if you are refreshed the back log erases anything the rest built. It is a vicious cycle where we get trapped into thinking that we just have to keep going and forget being rejuvenated. Add the pressure of a boss or family who keep piling on the to do items and the never ending task list becomes a topic of nightmares. You will never get ahead, which causes more stress, which creates more reason to need to rest. 

Maybe the problem is not the rest but the workload. Each of us can only do so much, we can’t do everything. No one is perfect and no one can be perfect all the time. When you lay on your death bed only moments before you meet your final end, I hope you will not be thinking about the reports you did or did not create or the emails you did not answer. I hope you are pondering the way you left the world better than you found it. I hope you are grateful for the love you gave and received, for the legacy you left for those who will still be on earth after you are gone. I hope you will have loved ones around you whose lives were changed by the way you chose to live your life. 

Puts the ability to rest and take a nap every once in a while in perspective doesn’t it?