I repent better in the waning / season
Something I finally learned is that you can run out of energy long before you run out of time.
I appreciated this Scalawag piece on the relentlessness of expectations - there are no breaks, there is no time off, evenings and weekends are just more opportunities to be beholden to the endless cycle of obligations, “lunchtime” is an apology in advance, it doesn’t matter if there’s been a hurricane or a wildfire or a pandemic in which millions died.
Why though? What are we running from? What are we running to?
We can intellectualize the difference between urgent and important; we can talk about boundaries; we can set our phones to DND; we can reject the instinct to apologize for taking more than 5 minutes to reply to something.
But the deep magic is in orienting around joy. Let the conversation go for hours. Lose yourself in the book. Say yes to the long walk. Sleep.
We will not survive the overlapping crises of climate and public health if we do not survive the work week.
Attribution:
The threat
of frost, a premonition
a warning, a whisper
whose words we cannot
yet decipher but will.I repent better in the waning season when the blood
runs swiftly and all creatures
look keenly about them
for quickening danger.—from The Late Year by Marge Piercy