And then I remembered that I’m addicted to busyness, and no amount of Vollerslevs can change that. “The need for an empty space, a pause, is something we have all felt in our bones; it’s the rest in a piece of music that gives it resonance and shape,” Pico Iyer writes in The Art of Stillness. Whenever doctors ask me if I’ve been tired recently, I look at them incredulously, like they’ve just asked me if I’ve been breathing recently – isn’t that normal? Isn’t everyone tired? I think. I make a joke about having toddlers.
I feel calm in IKEA because I’m paying attention, and that’s how it’s been designed. Even if I lived in this serene oasis of order, my brain would quickly adjust to its surroundings and continue its very important mission of Solving the World (which happens to involve a lot of screen time and Reddit threads).
Everyone walking around seems to be under the same spell.
As we enter this Easter period, I don’t want to be a slave to time anymore. I need rest – not the kind of rest you can throw money at, like a new Gnedby or a tropical holiday, but the kind where your mind feels renewed.
Rest is woven into the fabric of many religions; think of the Christian Sabbath or Jewish Shabbat. It’s not a suggestion but a command – a way to sustain the inner life. Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the Sabbath is like a “cathedral in time rather than in space”.
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We are a society obsessed with time; generations ago, people related to the world in terms of the space in which they lived, and time was peripheral. Now it feels like it’s the other way around.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting beautiful surroundings that promote tranquility, but it’s not the solution. You cannot buy rest. Sometimes you just need some good old-fashioned discipline to disconnect. Thomas Merton wrote, “And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform.”
I want to understand Blaise Pascal’s line about unhappiness stemming from being unable to sit quietly in one’s room (I’m not sure he had toddlers, though). Maybe then I can sit in my own house, which tends toward chaos, and feel peace.
That sounds more appealing than a new Strandomon, and you don’t even need an Allen key.
Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.
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