Work, family, plans with friends, sports ... when do you take time to savor life?
One of the problems that constantly comes up in many people’s lives is maintaining balance between work life, family life, and personal time. But in most cases the root of the matter is the inability to prioritize what is really important, especially caring for one’s own life. When something is really important for us, we find the time for it.
We tend to postpone the important things because of what’s urgent so our health and our relationships with others suffer. In fact, it’s the family that usually pays the high price of all the rushing we do. Don’t you think we need to stop from time to time? Could it be that we’ve forgotten the importance of taking breaks in everyday life? Have we forgotten the art of stopping?
We may be doing well in our work and achieving our goals, but on the way we can forget to take care of the life that sustains everything else.
How can we take better care of ourselves and not fall into unbridled busyness? The recommendation, from the ancient philosophers to the experts in occupational medicine, is to learn to take breaks in day-to-day life. It is an old and wise custom to pause in the middle of any activity, and it has great benefits.
Philo of Alexandria (1st century AD) understood rest as an activity without effort, as a creative state of calm. For the Jewish philosopher, only the irrational man is agitated, while the wise man knows how to rest to get in touch with his own creativity.
The art of stopping
The word pause in its Greek origin (anapausis) refers to “repose,” “interruption,” “rest.” In ancient times, the pause was understood as a creative act, as a healing interruption.