By Madame X © 2008
Western culture expressly wants us to be kept busy. We aught to be had workers, be industrious, occupy our free time with productive hobbies, seek partners who are active and dynamic, never waste a waking minute, never be idle, and never daydream.
We are expected to get up at the crack of dawn and immediately begin our day by tending to our all too human needs and those of our family, hurry to fill the rest of the day with a financially rewarding 8 to 6 job, hurry home to tend to more needs till we finally collapse senseless due to exhaustion. When the weekend approaches we are to fill it with all those tasks we neglected throughout the week; like grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, working on the car, mowing the lawn, painting the fence, visiting the in-laws, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook… In the midst of all this and more, when do we have time for us? It is becoming harder and harder to find time in our daily routines to be introspective, creative, or otherwise release our stress.
We are told repeatedly and in many ways that “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools”, but in fact it is those very idle moments that bring us closer to our source, closer to our higher-selves and closer to our inner nature. Idle peaceful moments allow us to tap into our creative side, to practice introspection, to engage in meditation, to develop spiritual rituals, to day dream, to fantasize, to contemplate possibilities and to just stop the madness. Moments away from Dayside responsibilities are needed, if we seek to develop a healthy relationship with our selves, our conscience, our past, our present and our future. It is important to find this time in our busy schedules, step back and look around; realizing that life is beautiful, nature, human accomplishments, honest smiles, the sky, music, that sent, this color… As we become more and more entrenched in our overwhelming dayside, our burgeoning careers, our dead end jobs, our financial responsibilities, our all too human needs… we resign ourselves to losing touch with our Nightside. These idle moments have become precious treats in our society. We must therefore, strive harder to find these small niches of time to explore our natures, to compare them with others who walk our path, to continue to learn as we experience life thru our own particular window, and ultimately journey toward our dreams.
Too many of us are slaves to our Dayside demands. It really aught to be the other way: our Dayside toils should serve us. It is not an easy turn around to make, but we need to shape our Dayside so that it better serves who we are, what we want to be, and where we wish our dreams to take us. Our Dayside should ultimately enable our Nightside, not hinder it. As Nightkind we are faced with the difficult task of balancing the two. While neither should suffer prolonged or extensively, we do owe it to ourselves to find quiet peaceful moments to simply reconnect, relax and allow our dreams to take form.