Today, someone at work told me to have a relaxing vacation. I laughed and said we are facing some pretty strenuous hikes – it will be far from relaxing. Fun, no doubt, but exhausting. But it made me think – when am I ever actually relaxed? I’ve venture to say never.
First, let me explain what I think it means to be relaxed. To be truly relaxed takes more than just lazing about on the couch watching tv or surfing the web, which is what comes to mind for many people when they think of relaxing. Relaxation is more mental than physical, that is, you can’t be relaxed lazing about if you are mentally disconcerted. A good example is people who play golf to relax because golf, although physical with a fair amount of walking, clears the mind of the player.
So where am I on the spectrum? Well, on the physical side of things I’m fairly relaxed. Hey, I sit in a cube all day. Not too challenging physically speaking… I do have a nightly workout to endure after putting J to bed at night, all this after chasing her around all evening. So while there are some physical demanding parts of my average day, it ultimately can’t be considered intense overall between the cube jockey job and sleeping.
On the mental side, however, it’s a different story. I seem to find myself constantly worried, anxious, or even just mildly troubled by …something. What this something is varies greatly – it may be a serious problem, or it may be something trivial like trying to remember that my pants need hemmed. But regardless, it is always SOMETHING.
Admittedly for me, it’s about 80% trivial matters on my mind, but nevertheless it is enough to prevent true relaxation. So the question was, when do I ever feel relaxed? Unfortunately, I really don’t know…
