Restful productivity. Does that even exist or is it an oxymoron? It feels like a desire that is buried deep, yet it’s elusive and ethereal. Can my rest be productive? Can I actually eliminate busyness and experience true contentment without the nagging restless anxiety simmering within me, prompting me to accomplish something with my idle time? It’s the ever-present notion that idle is synonymous with waste which produces guilt and pushes me to find tasks, make plans, and keep busy.
It’s when I am forced to slow down – when no plans have been made or can be made – that I actually feel the restlessness. Ironically, you would think that would be the driving feeling I would experience continuously, inspiring me to action, but in the middle of the activity, I only feel the warmth of accomplishment, the energy of progressive movement. In the stillness, the calm disappears. In simply being, I am left with a being who is not doing. And what is my being if not defined by a continuous stream of doing? Being is anything but simple. And it certainly is not restful. It’s a place of twisted webs and an endless vortex that typically produces an anxiety which feels like it can only be expressed in spontaneous action or escape. Distraction becomes a lifesaver to fill in the gaps between rest and productivity. Not really fulfilling either, but drowning the anxiety that is felt when trying to experience restful productivity.
Perhaps it’s a mindset shift. A definition change. I am sure my definition of productivity is limited as I relate it to that which is action. And I know many actions produce the same outcomes for me that traditional rest does for others. It produces life, peace, energy, purpose, fulfillment, and contentment. But, it’s when I don’t have the option of action, especially action with others, that I feel unproductive in my lack of a schedule or plans. How can being become restful? How can this type of isolated, forced rest translate to productivity in my mind and perhaps dispel the restless anxiety which a lack of activity always produces?
I don’t know how to be. To be without doing. To simply exist and feel satisfied in that existence even if I produce nothing. What do I do to be? Which is not the right question because there is no doing in being. Or is there?
And maybe the true reality is not that I am anxious about the lack of activity in being. It’s in being alone. I am content to simply be in the presence of others without the shadow of productivity driving our actions. Yet, it’s when I am alone that being produces no comfort. No solace in the solitary. No peace in the passivity. Only restless inactivity with a longing for restful productivity. Perhaps it’s a naïve longing, but it feels like one I should press into even if that means fully experiencing the anxiety and temptations of reckless spontaneity and distraction which threaten the realization of this desire. And to understand that the antithesis to striving continuously is grace. Grace for when I choose doing over being. Grace for when distraction is the preferred coping mechanism to numb the restlessness. Grace for when I simply don’t know. When I don’t know who I am, what to do (or lack thereof), or how to stay still.
My Mind Vortex 