Nothing
Empty agenda slots ahead after tomorrow, day after day of delightful nothing. Embracing the JOMO. joy of missing out, of holiday time.
Apart from two church events, my trip to see my family, and daily walking, there is a lot of blank space in my calendar until work resumes after New Year’s Day.
Even the day after the first day back at work is a disconnect day of rest and renewal.
How wonderful to have time off. And grateful am I that I have not worn myself out this year such that it is just collapsing into a heap of exhaustion after crawling toward Christmas for months.
The relentlessness of the Zeitgeist of the first quarter of the 21st century has been a lot. Between the pervasiveness of social media, the pressure to work work work, heavy news every day coming from all around, and whatever one’s nervous system has got going on as a starting template, not to mention the invasiveness of AI, the world has become extremely loud.
Personally, I don’t wholly take time any other time of year than this. The week of March break involves a lot of preparing for the frantic months before summer. I might go out of town other weeks in the year, but I tend to work remotely nearly every day.
So this has become my time in the year to stop the frenetic pace and savour time with the closest people in my life. To be with rather than endlessly do.
Not everyone loves silence and empty calendar slots. Some are afraid of boredom, and afraid of what might arise from the deep quiet. Here there be monsters?
Truly, depending on one’s trauma load, it may be really important to have a close therapeutic companion when the pressure eases off, and perhaps a spiritual director.
In fact, the field of psycho-therapeutic practice, once wholly secular, has begun tentatively to explore the role of faith and spirituality within a therapeutic relationship.
For example, this article from the American Psychological Association affirms that religion and spirituality do have a valid place in the context of psychotherapy. Here’s the disconnect:
More than 70% of U.S. adults say religion is important in their lives, and most patients want the chance to discuss religion or spirituality during therapy (Religion, Gallup Historical Trends, 2023; Oxhandler, H. K., et al., Religions, Vol. 12, No. 6, 2021). But when surveyed about their expertise, up to 80% of practicing psychologists say they received little to no training on addressing spiritual and religious issues during therapy (Vieten, C., et al., Spirituality in Clinical Practice, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2016).
The article goes on:
Myriad studies show that religious or spiritual involvement improves mental health and can be useful for coping with trauma. By centering the patient and their existing beliefs, psychologists can help people leverage their religious and spiritual resources as a source of strength during challenging times (Oman, D., & Syme, S. L., in Why Religion and Spirituality Matter for Public Health, Springer, 2018; Park, C. L., et al., Trauma, Meaning, and Spirituality, APA, 2016).
There is an important caveat, though. When religion has caused real harm to people, for example supporting oppression and erasure of one’s identity, if one is LGBTQ+ or has been told women are inferior to men, that needs to be rigorously addressed in order for spiritual as well as psychological healing to take hold.
Regardless of being theistics or atheist or agnostic, people have deep needs to explore meaning in their lives, and focusing solely on the psychological aspects to the exclusion of spiritual depth can leave people feeling empty and questioning in a purely secular therapy relationship.
In fact, by misunderstanding and dismissing the healthy role spirituality plays in patients’ life because of overly secular therapeutic formation, therapists can cause further harm to already wounded people.
It will probably take a long time for the therapeutetic mindset to fully embrace the need for proper training and support of new therapist deeply to understand the importance of faith and spirituality in people’s lives. Perhaps it will never happen.
So in the meantime, having a therapist as well as a spiritual director is an important option for people who need both.
So, if having a day or week of nothing is terrifying, if even 20 minutes of silent meditation seems way too long. maybe there is a message there. It’s not always easy to trust oneself, depending on the programming instilled during an abusive childhood, for one. But it is much better to listen to inner guidance than to forge ahead in dangerous waters unaccompanied.
On the other hand, if you long for JOMO, the joy of missing out, I hope that the coming days will provide the deep rest and renewal you need.