RESTING INTO AWAKENING

I have been crocheting for the past two hours, sitting on the sofa, in front of the TV, scrolling through my DVR recordings and getting caught up on shows I watch when I have nothing else going on.  Tonight I have nothing else going on, and I am content.  In fact, more often than not over the past year I've been damn near giddy to realize on many days I don't have anything going on in the evenings.  I planned it that way, having done a self-intervention awhile back about my over-scheduled life; still, it always surprises and delights me that I have actually stuck to it.  I feel happy about it.  And maybe a little concerned....

When I was a teenager, there were uncharitable times when I thought my parents were lazy and boring.  My dad worked 9 hours a day in a textile factory and my mom stood on her feet in her home beauty shop for about the same number of hours 4 days a week, while she also kept up with the housekeeping, cooking, laundry, we children, her own mother living with us, etc., etc.  So when they plopped in front of the TV every evening, my dad with the newspaper in front of his face and my mom knitting or crocheting, I could only think...."Wow! Why don't they do something fun and interesting??? How can they just sit there???"  I vowed that when I had my own children they would see me engaged in worldly pursuits and stimulating activities.  And they did.  I was on zillions of committees and belonged to a number of worthy cause type organizations and attended numerous personal growth groups.  I was out there!  I was making a difference! My life had meaning!  I was having a good time!  I was exhausted!!!

So, now, when I pine for and luxuriate in long quiet evenings of my own making, even when they consist of mindless pursuits like old episodes of Grey's Anatomy or The Office, I both love it and worry about it. I question whether I've succumbed to the dreaded "old person" scourge of hibernation and lack of motivation to engage in the world.  Am I lazy?  Is my brain atrophying?  Is my body weakening?  Do I still have any friends?  Does my family remember me?

I know these are unwarranted fears....not one of them is true, especially that I've somehow dropped out of engagement with life, but such is the tug of needing to feel I'm "active" that any vegging-out time I take, especially when I take lots of it, feels like the kind of dropping out that could easily lead down the slippery slope of "just killing time", a phrase my dad used often in his later years when I would inquire what he was up to.  He'd say, "Oh, not much.  Just killing time."  That seemed so sad to me, to be merely existing.  But who knows?  Maybe it was finally a time for him to think, feel, observe, and just be.  Time was passing for sure, but who am I to say it wasn't the quality time he needed after a long life of hardship and hard work?  Maybe, for him, this time of not keeping time, not being run ragged by responsibilities, obligations, and schedules was the ultimate luxury.

I notice now that evenings at home with Hub, my books, my writing, my crocheting, and my TV shows, feels like a slower life for sure, quieter, much less stressful, and also like a gift....a gift I would enjoy a lot more if I wasn't troubling myself all the time by questioning some deeper, nefarious meaning behind it.  Letting go of old tapes, old judgments, and old fears is another form of the ultimate letting go that is the work of these Eldering years.  I realize maybe I am not "asleep" after all, but awakening to a different way of being.

At least, that's the view from here...©