Rest - Part 3 - Confusing Restlessness with Ambition

I've always associated being restless as just a synonym for agitation, boredom, or under-stimulated.

When I started thinking deeply about rest, I realized that rest-less-ness is more than agitation. It's that state of not being rested, or perhaps even, unable to rest. 

And I always considered myself ambitious - which I thought was a good quality. But I'm starting to wonder if I've sometimes confused ambition with restlessness. I've put a positive spin on the difficulty of finding rest by labeling it in my own head as ambition; a quality our culture admires and praises. I'm even pretty good at appearing to make it not about myself, by making my "ambition" a spiritual quest to do good in the world. If there's a real danger to our thinking about living God's mission on earth, I think it's that we can quickly take the theology and make it a justification for trying to be spiritual superheros.

But I'm not just ambitious, I'm restless.

Chronically restless.

My conscious mind may not always recognize it, but clearly when I listen to the clanging of my semi-conscious thoughts, the truth is, I'm restless and revved up. When I sit and try to be still, I'm inundated with all the things I should be doing instead.

These things I should be doing?...usually they fall under the heading of "responsibilities".

I have lots of things I'm responsible for. My chosen profession puts me in place of high responsibility for the care of lots of people. I have a business to manage. I have kids. I have a mortgage. I have retirement to save for. I'm trying to change my lifestyle and prevent health issues down the road. I have friends and neighbors I take care of. I have a church that wants to see me use my gifts to bless them.  I have a deep conviction that the way most of middle class folks live is unsustainable and problematic for the 2/3 rds world and future generations...and a profound sense that I should be doing something significant about that.

It became crystal clear to me after being away from my normal life for two weeks this winter that things in my world have become too complicated and involve too much responsibility. Or at least, it feels that way.

And yet at the same time I have this compulsion to take on more. Even to take on new responsibilities. I say no to lots of requests...I'm not that guy who feels guilty for turning people down (usually). But I am the type of person bursting with creative energy, always wanting to take on new projects, start new things, and, if I haven't admitted to it already on this blog, save the world.

So it seems that a part of my difficulty resting is having too much responsibility. There are too many demands on my time, energy, resources...and admitting that I need a break from some of it is hard to do.

In the last few months, I've taken some steps to simplify, to shed unnecessary projects, to slow down.

But the tension I struggle with is an inward drive against my efforts to simplify and slow down.

Every time I try to stop doing and allow myself to just "be", my mind kicks in with a new set of efforts and ideas that I want to pursue.

Even just reflecting on rest has me thinking about how to elaborate these ideas into writing a book. Which ends up making my pursuit of rest into a project filled with activity.

So I think I've realized that part of my journey is making some structural changes to my life, including adding some practices that promote rest. Some of it might require me to pull back even more and allow myself to just be a person, rather than all of the other roles I perform.

But I'm also becoming aware that resting will require some internal changes. Changes in my own inner world, and this apparent compulsion I have to activity. Restlessness, not Ambition.