IS SELF CARE ANOTHER TO-DO FOR YOU?
I read recently that when meditation was developed it was not a ‘practice’ necessarily, or a way to achieve. anything at all — it just... was.
So that you could just... be. Period.
But the West and modernization turned it into what it is regarded as now: a practice, an exercise, something on our to-do list, a means to an end.
And the exact details of the history there is beside the point because I think we all know this to be alarmingly true:
We cannot take time to do nothing but EXIST without it being “productive” in some manner.
And honestly, how fucked is that?
We literally have to justify our own experience to SIT. In our bodies. In our lives.
We can’t take 10 minutes to ourselves a day to BE — to reflect, or ponder (the root of ‘meditation’) — without justifying it somehow.
For most of us, the idea of ANY quiet time set aside for connecting to our own damn selves (meditation or otherwise) is racked with:
- GUILT (I should be doing something else)
- FEAR (what will I find in there), and
- SHAME (another thing I’m supposed to do and failing at).
And that just ain’t it, love.
So just in case you needed to hear it:
Your time spent on you does not have to come with a Seal of Productivity.
The guilt you feel is from conditioning, and I invite you to inquire in to where it may be coming from and who that feeling truly benefits.
Your life is not a to-do list. Self care and inner work are not another place for pressure, perfection, performance, or pass/fail.
Your hours are your hours; your days are your days; your life is your life; and you deserve as much of it as you hand to everyone else. More, even.
You’re spending your time on various apps checking in on everyone else’s life — are you checking in on you, too?
I invite you to. Regularly.
And you never need to explain, apologize, justify, or earn it.
Give yourself the gift of balancing all of your DOING with BEING.
No strings attached.