#rest

Rest Takes Work

I messed up over the Christmas holidays. I made a simple but silly mistake—a mistake that left me entering the new year feeling weary instead of rested, feeling drained instead of energized. It was a failure to plan, a failure to remember a simple truth about work and rest. Like so many other people, I chose not to work during the week that falls between Christmas and New Year’s—at least, not to do more than the minimum (which is essentially …

A Picture of Perfect Rest

A wealthy man, a patron of the arts, called three artists to his side and gave each of them a simple commission: “I want you to paint a picture titled ‘Rest.’” Away went the three men, each to his own studio to ponder the assignment, to rough up some initial sketches, to plan and paint his finest work. Months later the three returned to display their paintings. The first unveiled a landscape, a placid pool vividly reflecting the mountains that …