Take a Break
You can drink as much water as you want, and it is doubtful you would ever drink enough to die that way; though it is possible, more-so if you are dehydrated. By the time you are dehydrated enough to shock your system with a water overload, though, your cells have self-regulated to work with very little. Incremental change comes with less upheaval than drastic reversal.
It just so happens water isn’t something our bodies need a break from. Not in the way we need a break from activity or inactivity. A break or respite can be a means for balance, even a necessity in fact.
Everybody knows someone who refuses to take a break from this or that — I’m not talking about diets or aversions that ensure their well being or survival — and that person needs a break more than anyone. A lot of things would be nice, but it would be especially nice if those people would do us all, and themselves, a favor and do that.
We can only truly be responsible for ourselves. Remembering to take five, have a breather, let go for a bit. However that looks . . . but not really . . . because we can’t have some King Geoffrey running around crossbowing women to bedposts to unwind.
Maybe write a poem, take a walk, knit, punch a bag, garden. Get away, get some time by yourself not connected to anything but your surroundings, maybe some music, a podcast, or a book, leisure-focused. Meditative.
Getting that meta-data, looking at our thoughts, noting them. If we are judging them good or bad, why? Are our reasons good or fair? Maybe that doesn’t sound like a break, if so let it go too.
Just watch a creek flow by, note the light glinting, brightening, casting shadows. Reflect on the surface of a lake and the trees rustling, birds diving and weaving, turning wing for a swooping U-turn. Some language has to have a better word than that for turning around, but who is to say better or worse? That’s in the eye of the beholder. And yet often not.
Noting the RNC’s use of feelings over facts in the election cycle, that old saying, “you’d have to be heartless not to be a liberal when you’re young, and brainless not to be a conservative when you’re old,” strikes me as humorously ironic.
That’s of course because I associate brains with facts, and feelings with hearts, maybe that’s just me though.
I certainly have family who might like to argue.
The problem is that they don’t seem to trust facts unless they are measuring them, and they lack the tools and refuse to trust the people who have them, so they sort of cover their eyes and ears, then try to find magical reasons to create facts with causal associations and personal beliefs founded on belief itself as legitimacy.
I need a break from that.
How do I even argue?
One might say to the obstinately ignorant, “You are wrong and I can prove it.”
They argue.
So you may reply, “Oh you don’t believe me? Let me show you.” . . . “What? You don’t want to see?”
They may not. Yet belief is not enough to make something real. There are constraints. This should be obvious.
All things are conditional.
Context is important.
Details are important.
Words are important.
Nothing is important.
We are specs of dust and water in the cosmos, yes space dust, but still dust.
These truths exist in tandem.
We have to wrap our minds around a spectrum, but it isn’t a two dimensional line, despite it looking like such.
It is a swirling sphere of all extremes and inbetweens, were opposites can exist at once. So, anyway, take a break, find your respite, enjoy.
Originally published [unedited] in Issue #1 — Respite
