Pace Yourself
Last week, I
met a woman who told me that she was just tired. I asked her to elaborate and
she began to weep. She said she was tired at work and tired at home. She was
just tired.
I knew and
understood what she meant. My mother used to call it, “being sick and tired of
being sick and tired.”
I felt for
this woman, but I had to tell her the truth; her choices were making her tired but
she could choose something else.
Life is hard, but it can be hard good
or hard bad---pick good.
When I clean
for an hour, I am exhausted. When I dance for an hour I am exhausted and exhilarated,
so I dance while I clean.
My mother
died at the young age of 87. No one ever guessed her age, not even when she was
extremely ill. She always looked refreshed and renewed.
“That’s
cause I know when to rest,” she would say.
People think that getting old
gracefully is all about the genes, but I think it’s about the pace with which
we live. If you are alive, then you are aging. Learn to pace yourself.
Yesterday, I
got up early and got ready to work. I was tired and wanted to rest, but I
pushed myself to fill my day off with the things I wanted and needed to
complete.
I could hear
my mother admonishing me about burning my candle on both ends. I could hear her
saying that even iron wares out, and I could she her dancing.
Whenever we
had a party, my mother would dance with every person there. She dance up to
someone and with fingers popping, she’d ask, “You want some of this?”
Everyone
marveled at her ability to dance all night, but I knew her secret; she had
prepared all week for this one day of dancing and she paced herself through the
dance.
My mother
made it look like she was tearing up the floor, but in truth she was barely
moving.
She knew how
to pace her dance because she had learned to pace her life.
Yesterday,
while I was scolding myself for being lazy, I recalled the fact that I had been
working since I was 12.
I remembered
the woman who cried out loud because she was tired and I recalled my advice to
her, and I chose a path of rest.
Today, I am up
and ready to work, but my work will be much better because of the rest.
If there were more than 24 hours in a
day, many of us would kill ourselves. We don’t need more time, we need to learn
to use the time we have more wisely.
Pace yourself and you
will go much further.
Be you, be well, be
wise.
Bertice Berry, PhD.
This was a good read. God bless you!
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