Me Time

Although I get lots of energy from other people, sometimes I need an evening alone to recharge.

Today I attended a meditation for nonviolence training and heard this Thomas Merton quote that led me to reflect on the significance of taking time out to be with myself:

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

Update 8/1/16: Today's entry in Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef includes, "how long has it been since we have let ourselves hear the song of the task we are doing? When we do too much, we lose our joy in the doing and see only the labor and the deadlines. Even when we do not see the song in our work, it is still there. We have but to listen." Me time lets me listen.