When the Mind is Tired
One
What do we do when the mind and soul are tired?
We all have this very familiar experience, we get to the point where our mind and emotions are overworked or overstimulated and we just need a break. The mind and emotions are shot and we just want to veg-out, relax, do nothing. We want to be entertained, so we go for whatever is within reach. We turn on the TV and start surfing, or we grab our phone and go to the news, or TikTok, or YouTube and start scrolling…But none of this is really satisfying. It doesn’t feed my soul and it is not restful. In fact, it leaves me more exhausted than when I started.
If I just try to sit in silence, my mind immediately becomes restless. It wants something to entertain it. It wants something to feed it, but with what?
Two
Delighting rather than vegging
When one part of your soul, your mind, and emotions are tired, when they are overworked or overstimulated, vegging out will never make things better. It only makes things worse.
The goal is not to veg-out. The goal is not to make the mind and soul completely passive. When one part of your mind and soul is tired, find another part of your soul to engage and enjoy with that part.
Think about exercise, specifically weight-training. When one body part is shot, we switch and exercise a different body part. If the biceps are tired, we switch and work the triceps, if the quads are shot, we work the hamstrings. This allows us to continue to enjoy the exercise or continue to get more good for the body.
Like the body, when one part of your mind and soul is tired, we need something good to do that we like that will give our soul what it needs to satisfy it. Because vegging out never satisfies.
Three
As we just said, when one part of your mind and soul is tired, that is not the time to veg-out. That will only fill you with junk and it will never satisfy your soul. When one part of our mind or soul is tired we need something good that we like that we can switch to that will give our soul what it really needs to satisfy it.
When your mind is tired of thinking, go to lunch and have a good conversation with a friend and laugh. When your mind is tired of words, switch to beautiful images. When your mind is tired of music, walk in the woods in silence. When your mind is tired of conversation, make yourself a good meal and eat alone.
If you are just too tired to take anything good into your soul, don’t fill it with junk. Go to sleep instead.
But don’t settle for passive entertainment because it will not give your soul what it needs. Actually, it will take from you more than it gives.
Four
We have to break our addiction to the junk food of the soul, to entertainment, so that we can enjoy the good food of leisure.
When my kids were little I would make them pancakes and waffles with real ingredients, made from scratch (or made from “scraps” as Claire Hinkel used to say). But they didn’t want them. They wanted the frozen waffles made from 600 chemicals. All parents go through this. We put good food in front of our kids and they want junk. We could just keep feeding them junk but it would be better to let them go hungry until they are so desperate they will eat the good stuff.
The first thing we have to do to break their addiction to junk food is to get it out of the house. When we eliminate what’s bad, in desperation we will turn to what is good.
In 1991, I was so sick of TV that I got rid of it. Then I was so bored and desperate I began to read anything that was in reach. Iwas so bored that I read the back of a can of Lysol. Then I found books and became literate and my soul came alive.
The first step to feeding our soul is to eliminate the junk that is killing us.Eliminate the bad. Then you’re left with nothing, which is horrible. In desperation, to get away from the “nothing,” we’ll then turn to what is good.
Isn’t that the way God works with us? He’ll wait until we turn to him as a last resort and then we find what we’ve always wanted.
Five
Good leisure is not attractive to people surrounded by distraction just as good food is not attractive to kids surrounded by candy.
We need to get to the point where we like good things and we find them restful and nourishing. But that takes some discipline, some effort.
For instance, I find it restful and nourishing and pleasurable to go for a walk in the woods. I like it. Some people would not find that restful or pleasurable. For them, it’s just a chore, not leisure.
The same goes for preparing and eating a good meal or reading a great writer like Hugo or Dumas or Dickens. But if we make the effort to eliminate the bad we will get so desperate we’ll try the good and we might just find we really like it, that it was the food for the soul we always wanted.
All the different forms of leisure are different ways to give the different parts of your soul what it needs: truth, beauty, goodness, pilgrimage, nature, music, and good conversation.
When your mind and soul become tired of one, switch to another good thing you like. Then you can enjoy and delight in the good things of the world continuously because we were made for joy and not for sorrow.