Self maintenance

Maintenance instructions, July 2010

It seems like somewhere along the way, we have forgotten how to perform periodic maintenance on ourselves. Our bodies and our minds. If you run a vehicle without changing the oil, it won't last long. I neglected my personal maintenance recently and paid the price with a prolonged flu. In a perverse way, I was glad to be ill because I could finally stop and rest.

Marty the kitten, a new member of the Offworld family doesn't have a problem with maintenance. He plays, he eats, and when he needs to, he sleeps. Doesn't matter where he is, he stops. Doesn't matter how tantalizing a toy is, he stops. Doesn't matter if he is being pushed around in the back of a toy truck by a five year-old, he stops and he sleeps. Many of us could be more like Marty.

We haven't bothered hooking up the TV in our new Eldorado home and I'm noticing that I go to bed earlier. There's no show to distract me for "just another hour," so I go to bed. And I sleep. No problem. Feels good.

Stopping can be many things: resting, meditation, looking out a train window as you zoom from place to place, or just stopping in the middle of a busy day and doing a whole bunch of nothing for two minutes. It's not laziness. Try it and see how hard it is. After a while it's not so difficult and the benefits become clear. I've noticed and stopped a tension headache before it got out of hand and needed treatment with Tylenol and chocolate. I just made it through my first five-day work week in 4 years by going to bed early each night and stopping work at quitting time even if I was in the middle of something.

"Rabbi Tarfon, who lived at the turn of the first millennium, is purported to have written one of my favorite paradoxical quotes. It's a simple, yet profound statement:

You are neither obligated to complete the task nor are you free to desist from it.

What does this message mean? The first part of it says you're not required to do whatever you think you need to do. The second part says you still need to try to do the task, whatever it is.

I want you to think of some great project in your life you feel you've been called to do. Tarfon says you don't need to complete it. On the other hand, you can't stop from trying it."

- Rabbi Brian, Religion Outside the Box

This helps me put things in perspective. There will always be too much to do. My to-do list today starts with tending the garden, unpacking the garage, taking the boys to a movie, and goes on from there. I could write pages of things I'd like to do and never achieve a quarter of them. I'll have to settle for doing what I can.

How's your oil today? Does it need changing? Can you take a break? Even a minute will help.

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