Honest On Rest
top c/o // Topshop shorts //
purse c/o // Topshop wedges //
watch c/o
One of the biggest liberations I've learned during this journey of self-love and personal preservation is the beautiful power of honesty. And not just with people, but more precariously, with myself. I hold myself to a certain degree and even higher standard in order to push myself to my greatest potential--always believing I could do better and be more. Then when a sliver of exhaustion or a sigh of tiresome escapes everso slightly, I set forth a panic mode of self-deprecation and frantically populate my mind with alternative solutions. The problem is, there is never quite an end goal or a defined idea of what that "greatest potential" is, I'm just pushing and pushing hoping I'll meet a level of success I'm satisfied with but what that looks like or entails is completely unknown to me. I'm simply climbing up a mountain to the top of a view I don't even know will grant me relief. At this point, this is when I really look to myself and ask,
What am I doing?
I deem hard work as proportionate to success, so more hard work, more success. But what happens when I begin to feel overworked? When hard work is met with exhaustion rather than effort, at what point is it then considered overwork? When my mind is begging for rest and emptiness, when my body weighs heavily amassed and condensed. Is that when I'll know success? And if so, why does success taste more bitter than I had imagined?
Except it's not. All this extraneous effort and overtime is unnecessary energy when I've lost the momentum to understand meaning in my work. It means I need to desperately hit the pause button, maybe even set that away message to idle for the time being. Because I've realized being open and honest with how I'm feeling, especially when I feel like I deserve rest, holds the same value of hard work as my pushing towards something. To address and acknowledge when it is time to relax is also contributing to my overall success. When I can face myself and tell myself to sit down and relax and allow self-care, that is when I've understood what it means to be genuinely productive. To understand the importance of hard work and determination but even more so, to listen to my mind and body's strife for rest is the truest taste of personal freedom. It's like the law of physics and my vague knowledge of inertia--kinetic energy being the energy in motion to accelerate a body of mass, but also that same energy not necessarily destroyed, but simply transformed into a new type of energy when that body of mass is at rest. In light, my body is that ball of energy that constantly accelerates, but just as I can put full force into motion, that same force is needed to tell my body to rest. Either way, I'm using energy regardless of the state I'm in.
It's exhausting, sometimes, to be tireless the way I'm tireless. But not pretending it's easy is a liberation on its own. Being honest about how I'm doing and what I need is just as powerful, too. Success is only as revered as the honesty I allow myself throughout the journey. I'm here for the push but I'm also here for the rest.
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