Work, Play, Rest

I went a little bit crazy while studying for my graduate school comprehensive exams.  I ate, slept, and breathed that material.  I turned into an obsessive studying machine.  One evening my husband convinced me to take a break and go out to dinner and a movie.  We were sitting in the theater watching the previews and he leaned over and whispered fiercely, “you are studying right now in your mind, aren’t you?”  And he was right, I was going through material in my head.  I had totally lost it.

We all need work, play, and rest.  If we spend all of our time and energy engaging any one of these activities, our overall well-being will suffer.  If we neglect any one of these activities, our well-being will suffer.  We don’t necessarily need an equal balance of each, and what we need shifts with the seasons of our lives.  However, at any given time, work, rest, and play must all be present in adequate quantities.

My definition of work is very broad- anything creative or productive, any investment of self into a project or job that requires exertion or labor.  For the artist, anything that aids in the creative process can be work.  For the stay-at-home parent, diaper changes, bottle feedings, and story time are work.  Planting a garden, vacuuming the carpet, and writing a blog are all work.  So is going to work every day and fulfilling your job description, whatever that may be.

When I was studying for comps, my life was all about work.  There was very little time for rest in any form, and virtually no time for play.  When people live like this, they stop feeling human.  They become machines, moving from one task to another without seeing the people or relationships in their lives and without enjoying the beauty in the world around them.  Inevitably, they become stressed, cranky, and generally unpleasant to be around.  When I get into this zone, I don’t even enjoy being around myself.

On the other extreme is people whose life does not include enough work.  I believe that we were created in the image of a God who is active, who creates, who moves.  We reflect this image when we work, and if do not invest ourselves and our resources in something, we start to feel off.  We feel listless and lazy, useless and irrelevant.

The next essential element is play.  I have found myself asking quite a few adults lately what they like to do in their free time.  Many have a very hard time coming up with an answer.  As adults, many of us lose our ability to play.  We spend our time working, then collapse on the couch with the TV until it’s time for bed.  I am not anti-TV, and I do think that watching a show that you enjoy can count as play.  But that can’t be your only type of play.  What are (or were) your hobbies?  What amuses you and brings you joy?  What excites you and makes you laugh?  Is vacation the only time that you play?  That seems like an unfortunate way to live.

The lack of play seems more prevalent than the over-abundance of play, but both exist.  People who play all the time, at the exclusion of work and rest, quickly become self-centered and can easily fall into addictive traps.  Think of the teenager spending all day and all night in his room playing video games, or the compulsive gambler.  We need play, but we need more than play.

And finally, we need rest.  We need to sleep, we need to recharge physically and emotionally.  We need to nourish our bodies by stopping and eating real food.  Our hearts and our minds need silence sometimes, time to be still and quiet.  Rest seems to be the first thing to go in our busyness-obsessed culture.  The first thing we cut out is quiet time of reflection and the second is sleep.  We are a sleep-deprived culture and a rest-deprived nation.

Some of the best parts of life come when the lines between work, play, and rest are blurred.  We are in our element when we find work that we enjoy and find rejuvenating.  We feel alive when we work hard, play hard, and fall into bed ready to rest.  We are happiest and most energized when all three elements are present in our lives.  When one of these elements dominates our lives, we begin to feel off, restless, and unsatisfied.  We need all three.

I challenge you to take a few restful and reflective minutes to think about work, play, and rest in your life.  Are all three present?  Are they present in a quality and quantity that you feel satisfied with?  If not, it may be a good time to make some changes.