Midlife MavericksI went to Portugal to rest. My body had to take the wheel because my head wouldn’t.
I landed in Porto, got off the plane, and went straight to bed.
I didn’t go for coffee. I didn’t go to the pharmacy. I went to bed. And there I stayed, stretched out flat as a fish, unable to move, for most of a week that was supposed to be rest.
The irony didn’t escape me.
I’d come to Portugal precisely for this. My mother was going to take the kids. I was going to breathe. My head was finally going to switch off after weeks of working at a pace I can’t even call sustainable with a straight face.
The problem is I didn’t listen to the warning.
On Good Friday I “only” worked ten hours. I even thought I’d behaved well. On Saturday my body decided enough, and I lay flat on the sofa unable to move. On Easter Sunday I did the egg hunt with my kids because skipping it was out of the question, and then I went back to work.
Monday at dawn I caught the flight.
Anyone who works for themselves knows what the endless day looks like. There’s no hour you leave the office. Nobody switches off the light and tells you to go home. There’s always one more thing. One more email. One more task that got left behind. One more thing that, if you do it now, saves you work tomorrow. The negotiation is constant and it’s always with yourself, and you always lose, because you’re simultaneously the boss and the employee, and both have very convincing arguments for carrying on.
A few weeks ago I told you about the cheetah, my favourite animal, in connection with Beatriz Subtil’s talk on the importance of rest. The fastest animal in the world holds 120 km/h for 20 to 30 seconds and then has to sit still in the savanna for 15 to 30 minutes before she can even eat what she caught. If she ignores that, she dies of overheating.
I wrote about it with all the wisdom of someone who completely understood the point.
And then I went to work on Easter Sunday.
A cold that, on a normal day, would have been a two-day inconvenience left me completely floored. I spent the week taking paracetamol and cancelling everything. Friends I hadn’t seen in months. Plans I’d been making since I bought the ticket. Places I wanted to take the kids to. Nothing. The body did what it always does when the head refuses to listen. It took over by force.
The difference between the cheetah and me is that the cheetah actually stops.
What saved me was my mother. Without her looking after the kids, on top of being floored I’d have had to function as well. She kept them while I slept all day, sorted everything while I was useless. The support network isn’t a luxury. For some of us it’s literally what separates us from going under for good.
Sometimes rest isn’t a choice we make. It’s one the body makes for us.
Comment below. When was the last time your body forced the rest your head refused? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
