Hardly working.

We decided to close Grassroots for a week - a whole week! - over the holidays. We have been busier lately, but not crazy busy, and we don't have any patients coming in lately who can't miss a week. It's funny how hard it was at first for me to get behind this; it's hard to close up shop when you want to be available and don't want to miss any potential business. Luckily (I don't know if it was the solstice, or just the anticipation of being able to rest soon), I got tired. I mean, REALLY tired. Too tired to resist; tired enough to realize that it would behoove my patients and partners if I took a little break.

I was listening to NPR a couple of weeks ago in the kitchen and heard something that stuck in my craw a little, and I just this morning figured out why. The interviewers were doing some kind of "town hall" thing with some Iowans, mostly focused on health care. One woman was very much against a single payer/universal coverage plan. She said that she had had polio as a kid, and that her parents had paid for her to get three operations: "that was their CHOICE, and I can walk because of it," she said, and went on to say that she works really hard and makes lots of money and doesn't want to pay for things like other people's kids being able to eat breakfast at school.

I don't know about you, but I stopped in the middle of cooking when I heard that one. Wow, I thought, Scrooge much? I mean, of all the things that the Gummint spends our tax money on, I would have thought making sure small children were sufficiently nourished to be able to learn would have been way down on the controversy list.

But the thing that really bugged me was her implication that 1) you can create money (or health, for that matter) in a vacuum and 2) if you have money and other people don't, it means you work harder than they do. I really wonder where people like this woman think their wealth comes from. Does she think that the sweat of her brow congeals into gold? If she ever takes a week off, does she worry? or does she think, "I work hard, and I deserve it."

I'm not taking a week off because I deserve it, because I've earned it by working so damn hard; I certainly don't think I work harder than other people. I just need it, and that's a little bit hard to admit. But working it's good when qi is your business, because you can tell when you need a break. The last couple of shifts I had, I began to fantasize about all the silent meditation I could do when we were closed. I remembered an acupuncturist I used to go to when I was in school, who took off a whole month in the winter; he went on meditation retreat in his attic. I used to think that was so extreme, but I can begin to see the appeal - and the utility. It's like tai ji: you gather the energy for forward movement by sinking backward. I know this stuff, so it's funny to find myself having to remind myself; but it's because there are so many other messages in our culture that say: "you don't deserve to take a break yet, keep working, work hard, make a lot of money, then you can buy yourself something nice or some leisure time (full of activities)." Turns out going against the grain is hard work too.