PSST! Rantings, Musings, & "Not Your Mama's" Platitudes

Someone I love has returned into my life. I am so thankful and hopeful for a new beginning. 

Summer days, I lazed in the tall grass and watched buzzards float overhead, wondering whose carcass they'd pick clean next. I listened to cicadas sing, pulled their hollow shells from the bark of hickory trees. I built hay forts, and once, stole the burger out of Bud's lunch sack, replaced it with a cowpie (this was the day after he gave me a fat mouth). And I got more whuppings than I could count. After a while I didn't feel a sting. I learned not to look my father in the eye. Not to beg. Not to cry. Before he even asked, I said, "Nope, I didn't do it. I wasn't playing in the hayloft. I didn't touch Bud's burger. I would never ever steal a lollipop from the candy jar," even if a chewed stick was hanging from my mouth. I said, "Penny Sue, gave it to me." Or "my swim teacher, Miss Patsy, said it was mine—for swimming the butterfly." "Is that why I saw you climbing on the stool, fishing in my sweets jar?" he asked. ...

He is watching the music with his eyes closed. Hearing the piano like a man moving through the woods thinking by feeling. The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below, step by step. The music hurrying sometimes, but always returning to quiet, like the man  remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us, mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure  in the loss. In the yearning. The pain going this way and that. Never again. Never bodied again. Again the never. Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving. A humming beauty in the silence. The having been. Having had. And the man knowing all of him will come to the end.

And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Don't think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.  Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life.  You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.

What Does It Mean to Really, Truly Rest? What ‘counts’ as resting, and when are we simply swathing toxic productivity in soft pants and a robe?  By  December 22, 2022 Amrita Marino This article is part of   SELF’s Rest Week , an editorial package dedicated to doing less. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without   genuine downtime .  With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The  SELF  staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you. I confess that I didn’t give the topic of rest much thought prior to getting COVID-19  in January 2021 , which was the first time in my life that rest was “prescribed” to me. After my positive PCR test, I dutifully g...