Progress and Pause

 

If there is one thing that I learned this past year, it would be, in bold letters:

Rest is necessary. 

All my life, I have always felt guilty every time I rest, or chill. I had a happy childhood, but I spent most of my days studying. I focused on the academics as I was told it was a sure path to success. Somehow, it worked. I landed on one of the most reputable companies in the country and gradually worked my way up there. I was diligent and accommodating. I would give up my weekends and post-shift schedule just to start or finish a task. 

I prioritized work and study over family. Fortunately, my family never used it against me. I would bring a notebook while bonding with relatives because any moment away from being productive, I’d feel guilty. 

As I got older, I slowly started feeling burned out, tired, stressed out, name it. It felt as if I never stopped thinking even during my rest days. I am a thinker. I love to overthink, for others, it was a tiring chore. For me, it was a great mental exercise. But any type of exercise, if performed excessively, can lead to an injury. 

By the time I was in my mid-20s, I started going through a career plateau. I became a manager at the age of 25, and I got tired really quickly. It might be because of the times I had to give up my personal days off to do some work. When I hit the plateau, I just stopped writing, I stopped doing my best. I just lived my days normally, with occasional wins. And during these moments, I felt guilty, guilty for not giving my best, guilty for getting there quickly and becoming tired quickly. 

I acknowledged the feeling at the age of 28, but it is only now, five years later, that I am starting to understand what happened. 

I refused to take breaks. I refused to acknowledge those little wins I encountered which contributed to my bigger wins. So I got exhausted. Simon Sinek was correct when he said that many of us would treat life like a competition. I am so busy trying to win every single time, that I intentionally forget to stop for a brief moment, celebrate those little sweet victories, then win again. 

Simon Sinek is right. In life, there is no such thing as winning. He said that there is no such thing as winning marriage, winning therapy, winning life. Each of the examples I gave are divided into different episodes or chapters. Each episode is a complicated mixture of many emotions and intentions. If we want to win every single episode of our lives, we are set to ruin ourselves. 

And that is exactly what happened to me. My obsession to win, which is deeply rooted from my childhood experience, prevented me from living a peaceful and spiritually-sound life. I realized, although in the standards of the society I am successful, it felt like I never spent my time right. 

2020 forced all of us to stop living our normal fast-paced lives and introduced this cliché-ic new normal. The new normal meant staying in one place and having to deal with it for months. It meant letting go of our tried and tested choices (food, travel sites, activities) and creating new options (cooking, working out, staying in). Life has become less about living and more about surviving. 

But we are all here, and while we look back and feel that lump in our throats because of the loved ones we lost, we are here, and we survived. 

We are facing another year with a quieter, more hopeful plea for better things. Here I am, making a strong suggestion, that while we strive and continue to progress in our lives, let us not forget to take a rest, too. 

Rest is subjective, so anything that will put your mind, body, and soul to a complete bliss, is great. You define it and you do it. 

So schedule your leaves, own your weekends, and sleep soundly. I am thankful for my bosses who have encouraged me to take my leaves seriously. Thank you. 

Progress will never be achieved without the necessary pauses and breaks. Progress and pause, like life and death, are both vital to live our lives to the fullest. 

Someone told me that among the many resources we have, time is the only thing we cannot earn back. We can always earn money, food, or sometimes energy, but once we spend our time, we can no longer take it back. 

This 2021, I am picking up the lost pieces again. Let us be kind to ourselves and to others. I am living not to win, but to progress, truly progress, while acknowledging my moments of pause. 

Happy New Year. I wish you well.