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Wait.   What just happened? All the sudden my social media is full of sweet 1st Day Of School pics and I’m wondering, “Where did the summer go?” NYC public schools don’t start for another 2 weeks. Don’t hate. We didn’t get out until June 28th. The freewheeling, stay up ‘til midnight days are winding down, evidenced by forms in my mailbox and an inbox stuffed with information about school events, activities and clubs.

School hasn’t started and I’m already needing another break. I’m pretty certain I’m not alone. Conversations with sisters and friends reveal all of us are feeling stretched and pulled in a thousand different directions. Somehow we’ve gotten so caught up in living life to the fullest, we’ve exhausted ourselves and forgotten how to live at all.

Where does this come from? Why are we all running ourselves into the ground? Perhaps we are all ingesting ideas from the culture around us:

• We equate rest with laziness.  Several years ago, I remember hearing an interview with a female entrepreneur who built a national brand (she will remain nameless, but 99% of you have heard of her).  I admire her. She’s both artistic AND business oriented (rather like my favorite entrepreneur, CC Miller!)  When asked how she accomplished so much, she said:  “I sleep, on average, 4 hours a night.”  Gulp. Is that what it takes to “make it?” No wonder we fill our calendar until it’s bursting.

• We value external signs of success. It’s so easy to equate success with the size of our savings, or the size of our houses, the vacation destinations, or (cringe) the accomplishments of our children. The nicer someone’s lot in life, the more successful they must be. Working 60 hours a week or hauling our kids to “enrichment” activities 5 days a week seems like a fair tradeoff for the appearance of a successful life.

• We live in a world that is always “on”.  A generation ago, people predicted that one of the main challenges for coming generations would be too much spare time. HA. Don’t get me wrong. I love my iPhone. Texting is one of the best inventions ever. One of my great joys is snapchatting with my 15 year old son (I could use that beautifying filter all day every day). But technology has made our lives more complex. Now you gotta be building your brand 24/7.  So we answer emails at 10 pm and get texts from clients on our “day off.”

What do we need to do to get off this merry-go-round of crazy? I think the first thing is obvious:

STOP

Find one day a week, or one afternoon a week, or an hour each day if you can swing it, just STOP. Stop with the hustling and the activity and the striving and just be.

Early this summer, my family stayed at a cabin in Maine. When I say cabin, don’t picture glamping. I mean an A-frame, spiderwebs in the corner, mismatched silverware cabin. There was no wifi and no cell service and no cable tv. But there was a river. It was wonderful. For one blissful week, we roasted marshmallows, looked at stars, and played in the river.  Then we came right back into the city and picked up a frenzy of activity- work, theatre camp, basketball camp, social events, and the general mayhem that makes up a modern life.

I kid you not- a week later, we were so harried and frazzled –with our summer -that my two teenagers looked at me and were like, “We are TAPPING OUT.”  One wanted to cancel a camp. Another asked, “When will we just be at home?”  You know things are bad when your teenagers call you out on overscheduling.

We needed to stop.

The next thing?

EXAMINE OUR MOTIVES  

Professor Peter Kreeft says, “We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified.”

Ouch.

Why did my family have so much going on? Enriching experiences. Personal growth. Healthy outlets. Sure. All of those reasons are valid. But to be really, painfully honest, I had enrolled them in some of this stuff to set them apart- to excel, to achieve, to “be the best version of themselves that they could be.”  A little of this is good. A lot is a disaster. We needed to reexamine what really mattered.

THE COURAGE OF NO

Do you have anything you can eliminate to make more space?  Is it possible you’re saying “yes” to something because you’re concerned about what someone will think? Let’s stop living our lives for someone else. Saying no is going to take courage. Prioritizing rest – and space- will be an act of resistance against an overstuffed, oversaturated world.

Maybe block out one night a week. Or tell the kids to pick one activity a semester.

As school ramps back up and we get back into the swing of fall, let’s push back against the go-go-go nature of our culture. Let’s be brave enough to leave some space. Space to think, space to read or create or listen to music or sit in the back yard or even be bored! (When was the last time you were bored?) Hold me accountable, too. The holidays are right around the corner….

Rhesa currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two high schoolers. For several years the family lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She drags her kids to a lot of museums. Find her on Twitter or Instagram: @rhesastorms