Relax!

John 14:27

Most evenings find my lovely wife knitting while I read, both engaged in activities to wind down before cutting the lights another day. My lovely wife chose to knit as a perfect means of relaxation, calm, and settledness. So wise a choice this was for her, that I often hear her exclaim in perfect Zen stillness--

Why don’t the (--------) stitches come out the (---------) way the chart says they should (-----------) do?!! Where the (--------) did those two stitches (---------) go?!!

I’M GONNA RIP THE WHOLE (-------------) THING APART!!

Ah, nirvana--it is so good to see it actualized!

It is a wonderment how many pastimes meant to lead to calm, stillness, and simple relaxing end up somewhere else. 

Take fishing--I have seen the Zen masters who can sit perfectly still for hours as the moon sets, sun rises, and evening comes, finding perfect equanimity with the world and all in it. There are two that come to mind. The other 50000 anglers I know have threatened to (a) sink the boat with dynamite; (b) wrap a fly rod around a water oak in some form of mystic origami; (c) murder the schmo with them who catches a fish each cast; and (d) all of the above simultaneously. 

I have seen camping trips--a weekend to get away from everything, unplug, and breathe natural, unair-conditioned atmosphere, and to sit contemplatively staring over a mountain ledge--devolve into an episode of Dr. Phil or Jerry Springer, complete with flying folding chairs, genetic cursing, and NC-17 violence, including a threat to toss a first-born son over said ledge. 

And on it goes--the attempts to relax become stress festivals.

Why?

Because relaxing activities are only as relaxed as the participant.

My dad introduced me to sailing when I was a very young boy. I have not sailed again to this day. Sailing with Dad was an existential experience. Invariably, getting the boat set up for the outing would end with at least a smashed finger, then there would be the speedboat that cut us off, capsizing us, then would come the summer squall that torpedoed us, and so we would paddle back to shore--one of us clinging to the side OUTSIDE the boat, the other using the wooden paddle because the sail had had it. I should have known better. Dad went sailing to unwind. That was all I should have heeded. STAY HOME, YOUNG MAN! He might as well have wrapped himself in caution tape as he made the announcement he was going sailing. 

I learned this lesson from a senior while running collegiate cross country. I hit a plateau in performance I could not escape. I was stuck. I worked, worked, and worked some more to find some speed. I ran analyzing every single tick and tock of my stride. I ran aware of each and every breath. I ran nearly trying feel how the wind stirred every individual hair on my head. Nothing worked. Finally, after I exploded in frustrated rage at the end of a tempo run, stuck in the same time as two years earlier for the distance, my friend took me aside. “Just run. Nothing else. Just run.” We were on a recovery trot after  that awful practice session. We tooled past a schoolyard full of K-5th Graders. “Look at them run.” I did. They ran laughing, chasing each other, falling over their feet, bouncing up, and flitting off somewhere else. “THAT is running,” he said. Next race, I leapt off the plateau finally freed.

And that, friends, is how to relax.

Just be where you are, as you are, doing whatever it is you do.

My lovely wife has knitted some wondrous creations--socks, scarves, washcloths--they all came when she just knitted. 

And that really was a moment of complete being.