Thought for the Week: Stepping off the treadmill
'It doesn’t take long to step off the treadmill. But, in my experience, it’s essential.' Judy Clinton reflects on the importance of allowing time to catch up with ourselves
There had been a sharp frost overnight. The sun appeared early and it was set for a beautiful day: oh what joy after months of winter gloom and cold temperatures! How blessed I am to be retired and therefore more free to seize opportunities as they arise. Today was undoubtedly one such opportunity, beckoning me out into nature.
I’d just driven to an area not far from home. It is one I’m not familiar with. I started to plod up a steep bridleway through woodland, and soon after this the words came into my head: ‘My soul is weary.’ I couldn’t tell you what my ‘soul’ is exactly; and ‘weary’ contains not only tiredness but a hunger. Nonetheless, the statement rang deeply true.
I’ve been busy lately with a mixture of day-to-day necessities and challenges, new projects, and fresh connections with individuals and groups. Most of it has been interesting, stimulating and life-giving, but it has all taken a great deal of energy. What comes to me now is that I need time and space in which to assimilate what has been going on.
Modern life is a kind of forward stampede or, to change the metaphor, a treadmill of sorts. Just as we have services now that are available 24/7, so it feels we have come to have a 24/7 expectation of ourselves: always to be doing, thinking up more doing, with no inbuilt stopping any more. Once upon a time Sunday was the designated day of rest, when shops closed, along with other facilities, and people had the opportunity, permission even, written into life to breathe out, come off the treadmill, halt stampeding and give themselves time to catch up with themselves (or their souls). The disturbing thing is that relentless ‘treadmilling’ has become so much part of of how life is now that we can, all too easily, not even be aware that it is so.
As I continued up the path the quiet enfolded me, punctuated from time to time by the piercing sound of birdsong of different kinds and the occasional passing aeroplane. My pace was slow, partly because of the steepness of the slope I was on, but also by choice. I wanted to slow down to nature-speed, and as I did so my thinking slowed too. It became deeper, more reflective, and more spiritual: less peppered with my activities, concerns and wishes.
I had been reading a section of a book by Thich Nhat Hanh before I went out, in which he talks about what he calls ‘singleness’. Things do not die, but simply take up different forms. My thoughts turned to my mother, who died four years ago, and for whom I still grieve. I recalled her eccentricities, her determination to be true to herself, her joyfulness, the way she used to laugh sometimes until tears poured down her face, her articulacy and her failure to suffer fools gladly. I miss all these things but, in the quiet of nature, underpinned by Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing, I could feel those characteristics of my mother very much alive in me; and in that connection, the grief within me eased and was replaced with a companionability I hadn’t felt for a long time.
I continued on up the path until I reached a high point. I took in great deep breaths of fresh air and delighted in the big wide view over countryside, which already has the early hum of spring on its way. It doesn’t take long to step off the treadmill. But, in my experience, it’s essential.
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