Storing Energy
"It is genius to store energy. Though one has no idea what that energy will be used for, to have a store of energy accumulated is to have power in back of one. We live with our psychic energy in modern times as much as we do with our money--mortgaged into the next decade. Most modern people are exhausted nearly all the time and never catch up to an equilibrium of energy, let alone have a store of energy behind them. With no energy in store, one cannot meet any new opportunity."
--Jungian author Robert A. Johnson, as quoted in Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
by Elizabeth Lesser
I'm sitting with this quote these days, looking for ways to rest my body, replenish and restore my energy. It's so easy for me to just keep moving, thinking there is something to propel or keep moving. Thinking something somehow depends on me, and that outer activity will somehow carry the day.
But though this is a commonly held cultural belief of ours, there is a deeper, quieter wisdom that has me planted on my sofa, or mopping the floors when I just need to move. It reminds me that there is some greater work that is wanting to be done in the world, with or without me. It warns me against losing my rootedness, my grounding and my depth. It teaches me that everything happens when it looks like nothing is happening.
So I hold my sick girl, and I rest my body and joints while they heal from a fall last week. I brew chicken stock on the stove top and listen to a soundtrack