After Dinner, Rest a While!
Advice is sold on the free market, and pseudo-counsellors want us to spare our valuable time for their invaluable suggestions. Many times, in hope or despair, we ourselves seek someone’s suggestions and usually get some prescribed dose of psycho-neuro-immuno-medicine. Quite often, these medicines contain someone else’s quotations, or good old proverbs. The topic of this article is just a sample of these kinds of medicines.
The article is just an expansion of the idea in the proverb. I had written this article originally on Jan 29, 2005 in a “proverb expansion contest” among my friends.
After Dinner Rest a While, After Supper Walk a Mile!
It was a Sunday. Raunak woke up early in the morning. He was happy, as all class IV kids are, because it was a holiday. His mind was mirthful to excess, and right since the last evening, he had chalked out careful and delightful plans to celebrate all day. After a fresh beginning of the day, and a heavy breakfast, he went off to play. It might have been a little unfortunate for him that day, but he could not find any of his friends to play with — they should have had some other plans. Disappointed, he sure was; but now he desperately wanted someone to play with. As an obvious choice, he went to his father, Mr. Sohan, and insisted that they both play for some time. To sheer bad luck of Raunak, Sohan had very important engagements for the day, and he could not but disappoint his son. It was a rest-day for Raunak, no doubt, but for Sohan, it was a day for rest of the work. Some very urgent office work was pending under a pressure of fast approaching deadline; so urgent, that he could only see Raunak go crying to his mother; crying because all his plans shattered.
Sohan was working over time, because it was a part of his ‘duty’. If we look carefully at people around us, including those in the mirror, we could find a Sohan inside us. Our lives have become full of care. Our minds have developed a habit of worrying. There was a time when we used to stand and stare at beautiful things, and it is a very sorry state, that such a time has ceased to exist. We have unknowingly become worcoholics. A glimpse of the life style of some people make us wonder–do they work so as to earn for their home, or do they have homes so that they can sleep after work! Agreed, that there is a biological phenomenon of Circadian Cycle, i.e. the body clock, but no one said that this clock needs to be synchronized with the wall clock! People have fixed up strict time tables for themselves. Every activity from waking up to sleeping back is performed in the synchrony of the clock ticks. They have become so used to listening the voice of the clock, that they have started to fail to recognize the voice of their heart.
We work to live; we earn to live; we eat to live; but living isn’t just that, is it? Since early youth, we, the people employ all means at our disposal, to ensure that we live better, and at the end of the ‘day,’ all that we discover is–we forgot to live. God had sent us here, to drink the nectar of the stepping globe to paradise; a handful of us tasted the nectar, many just smelled it, and most others were busy searching for a better flower–they were on a search that never ended. We started our journey in search of happiness, and somewhere in the middle, we forgot what we were looking for, and ran around the globe in all futile attempts to search ’something.’
I came accross an excellent connotation to the term ‘happiness.’ Happiness is not in getting what you want, but it is in wanting what you get. A food stuff is tasty not just because it has one’s favourite spices; most of the deliciousness comes from a special nectar–the nectar that is garnished by hunger. Food from the worst mess of the world and home made food might just be equally ‘tasty’ depending on how hungry one is! The food isn’t pleasing doesn’t always mean that there is something wrong with the preparation; something could be wrong even in the person who is blaming it! Food, of course, as a symbol of any thing that one ‘needs.’
Enjoyment doesn’t only mean taking breaks from work, watching entertainment programmes, playing games, or spending time in cultivating hobbies. He enjoys most, who enjoys every little thing that he does; from waking up, to going to bed. I remember, I used to eat very hastily, and finish before everyone else had their meals. I was appreciated for my speed, but silently taught something that slowed me down. They told me that I assimilate only that from the food, which I enjoy during eating. The body can take no more pleasure of the food than the tongue takes. Having a hurried dinner and then going back to work or bed, is not something that the body likes.
It is a good idea to rest after a dinner. Good thoughts are catalysts to the enzyme secretion process, and it is an excellent idea to think of good things after meal. Dinner is too late in the night for a this, but it is immense pleasure to take a walk after suppers.
Let us go on a long walk after supper. Let us enjoy the melody of the twilight. Let us see the flowers and trees bidding a good bye to the sun. Let us see birds returning to their nests after a long workout in the day. Let us see children playing in the parks. Let us see walk on the dew-moist grass and try to understand whether it was our coming that made the grass so happy, that it had water in its eyes. Let us learn from the snake wearing a new skin, and enrich ourselves with a new zeal. Let us see the stars in the sky, before the street lights put them off. Let us take a rich supper, and take a trip to the heaven on the earth; it’s not far away; let’s just walk a mile.
Let us rest after a heavy dinner. Let us think of the people who were behind providing the food to us. Let us thank the farmer who toiled days and nights, so that we can eat. Let us thank mother Earth, that she gave a fertile piece of land, where the farmer could grow his crops. Let us sit together. Let us talk to our people. Let us keep our minds away from all worries, and care about the arteries of people which are connected to our hearts. All the time we forget ‘rest’ from the world, let us, for some time, forget rest of the world. Let us have a delicious dinner, and take physical rest, while feeding the mind with serene thoughts; it won’t take aeons to assimilate the food; let’s just rest a while.
I am going to, after dinner, rest a while, and after supper, walk a mile. Why don’t you join me? It will be fun, trust me!
