Living in a Blur

Tragic place, supposed to be life,

Point of order, believe, or strife,

Negative wonder things unseen,

Hardly recognisable, reality a dream?

Merging moments, life untended,

Sprinkling truth, a soul to be mended,

Truth that never goes away,

Coming back day after day.

Warning atop warning, such is life,

Clinging close threatens the knife,

Come to the place, sure we can see,

Stop the rot now that is the plea.

Finally the courage, the reserve of pluck,

Nothing like maximising our determined “luck,”

Strident order this life abode,

Thank heavens a place of gentle goad.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There are always plenty of reminders to establish or re-establish life balance. Living in a blur is okay for a season or a specified time in life. We can easily rise to the occasion, like the surgeon undertaking a critical day-long operation or an emergency team clearing rubble after an earthquake. But, the human body and mind break down eventually if they’re not given the rest they need. Burnout becomes inevitable.

For instance, humans rack up a ‘sleep debt’ that’s generally very hard to recover from. We cannot bank sleep. Burn the candle at both ends week after week and soon chaos is going to cascade into your life—making itself a dogged home.

When life gets a little crazy our realities seem dreamlike. We wonder if they’re really real. We begin to forget things we used to easily remember. We begin to second-guess ourselves and others. We become less reliable.

When life’s too crazy we’ve forgotten the essential art of maintenance; the science of truth as far as our mortal bodies is concerned. And still the reminders come, again and again. The body and mind have their ways of ushering in sense—if only we’ll listen.

Our sanity is not something to be taken for granted. It is linked more with our holistic health than many of us realise.

The gentle goad is the body and mind’s reminder we’re to heed. If we don’t heed the reminder eventually we’re going to pay and the cost might be too great. Many people who push themselves too hard for too long will end up eventually suffering any manner of adaptive disorders, including anxiety attacks and depression. Certainly our capacities diminish. Our hope fades.

Then we resolve to do something; we act... we get involved for a time in inaction so as to recover... we make adjustments, at first, slashing adjustments.

As the blur then recedes and we take hold of our peace in the expression of courage to stop, rest, sleep and recover, our minds and bodies return—restoration comes into our spirits.

And life can begin again.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.