No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.
– Brooke Hampton
It’s true, isn’t it? Ask any person living in the so-called “adult” world, and they are more likely than not to tell you that they are tired, that they need a break. But no matter how much we rest or sleep each night, every night in the week, even catching some extra hours of sleep on the weekend, we don’t really feel as refreshed as we do after a short break or vacation from the monotony of our everyday lives.
Physical tiredness may be overcome by rest, but as Brooke Hampton said, it’s not our body that’s tired. It’s our soul.
We are tired of the constant challenges that we face in life – from little inconveniences to major setbacks, whether they be professional, financial, or personal. We are tired of the expectations that others have of us, that we have of ourselves, which are oftentimes unrealistic. We are tired of the constant deceptions and lies and betrayals that we feel we have been subjected to.
No amount of sleep can help us recover from these. What we need is a way to rejuvenate ourselves. A way to go back to the “beginning”. A way to reset and start over.
To do that, we need to rediscover our sense of wonder, to see the magic in everything, to regain that childlike innocence that life seems to slowly erode away over time.
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The means to achieve these may take different shapes for different people.
For some, it may take the form of a vacation perhaps. On vacations, specially those to new or unknown places, we consciously seek, and are more open to, the wonder and magic of the place that we are visiting. We find beauty in things that we’d simply never notice if they were in our own cities. On vacations, we are on an adventure. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want. We can choose to do nothing if that’s what we desire. We are free.
For me, it certainly involves ‘nature’ playing a major role. For some reason, I feel very attuned to the natural elements. Wind, water, light, trees, the night sky. Animals to some extent. Being around nature brings a certain calm and peace. That stillness opens my eyes to the grand cosmic play happening all around us – the sound of the leaves bristling in the breeze, as if excited children talking; of the raindrops knocking on the windows, inviting us to come play outside; trees swaying with the wind, like friends dancing the night away. In those moments, I feel as refreshed and as rested as after a good night of sleep, probably more.
(Nature certainly plays and important role in my life. I’ve talked about it before as well, in case you are interested in reading more.)
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These things may help, and help a great deal too. But the best way to rejuvenate our souls is through freedom, truth, stillness.
“The truth will set you free” may sound like a cliche, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I think we are most tired because of the weight of the different “masks” that we often put on and carry for life.
Truth is not always easy. It may hurt us or others a little (or a lot) in the moment, but it may also heal great wounds, or even prevent them in the first place. It can help us put down those masks. It can truly liberate us from the web of lies and deceit that we often end up in.
And lastly, stillness.
I think most of the stress and difficulties of life are caused, not by actual things out there somewhere in the real world, but by our own mind and its powers of perception and deception. We make up stories about ourselves and those around us. We make heroes out of some, and villains out of others. We are deluged with constant negative thoughts and worries. Before we are able to process and dismiss one, more pop up, and just spiral out of control. Unfortunately, many people try to find refuge from this in temporary distractions to dull the senses, to avoid having to deal with these patterns. But before we know it, the temporary distractions have become tragic habits.
But what if we could learn to shutdown the noise in our head? What if we could really be there in a given moment, enjoying it completely, without worrying about the past or the future? We could actually break free of the cycle of negative thoughts and emotions. See things for what they are, neither as grand delusions of how we’d like them to be, nor as nightmares borne out of our fears.
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Just imagine: What if each day we woke up as refreshed as after coming back from a long vacation? How different would that day be to every other day of our routine life? Now imagine being able to do just that, without going on a month long vacation!
Just seek out that one moment of magic, of adventure, of truth, each day. It might seem impossible to do that when you are slogging for 12 hours a day, staring at a screen at work, but I think it’s still possible. Take a couple of minutes out to see the sun rise. Look up at the clouds or at the stars. Talk to a child. Don’t hide behind a white lie to get out of something. Take a different road to work. Just close your eyes and watch your thoughts flow for one minute.
The body gets regular rest at night, but our soul doesn’t. Like a child, it cries out, but can’t explain to us what it wants. So, just like we would for a child, we’ll need to “feed” it, take care of it, listen to it, show it the beauty of the world.
Wake up and live. Not just breathe, but actually live. Consciously.
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