Labor Day, Rest and Recreation

Is the summer really over?

Today is Labor Day and I started thinking about the origin of the holiday. The first Labor Day parade was held in New York City on September 5, 1882. Twenty thousand workers marched in a parade up Broadway carrying banners that read:

EIGHT HOURS FOR REST! EIGHT HOURS FOR WORK! EIGHT HOURS FOR RECREATION!

I find it interesting that even over 100 years ago, people were fighting for balanced lives.

I don’t know many people who get 8 hours of rest per night these days. 8 hours of sleep seems like an unattainable luxury, and yet, all of the people I know experiencing sleep deprivation (including myself) are doing it by choice. It’s not necessarily our employers that demand the hours that we work – it’s our own relentless need to stay on top of things and constantly check our email, voice mail, web sites, social networking pages, and blogs. TIVO allows us to record shows that we may have missed while busy doing other things, and now we stay awake late at night getting “caught up” with TV. Best-sellers are delivered directly to our hands in seconds with e-books and we burn the midnight oil reading the latest installment of Harry Potter or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.

Would these activities qualify as our 8 hours of recreation? Are they cutting into our 8 hours of rest? And is this really how we really want to spend one-third of our lives?

Reading Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project , was a revelation for me. Rather than coming up with grandiose plans for changing your life, she picked small, simple steps to implement immediately and consistently like “go to sleep when I feel sleepy.”

I fought this concept for a while. The hours after my child went to bed were often the first times I had to myself all day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to finish my to-do list: pay bills, register child in classes, get caught up on e-mail, plan birthday parties, etc. Often times I would look up from my computer, see it was 1 a.m., and realize I’d be getting only four or five hours of sleep that night.

So, a few months ago I tried a radical experiment (radical for me at least). . . going to bed right after my daughter did. No computer and no TV after 8 p.m. I did let myself read in bed for the half hour or so before it turned 9 p.m., but then I promptly turned the light out and went to sleep. I told myself it was time to go to sleep. It took a few weeks for my body to adjust and for my mind to slow down and not having the stimulus of all the information from the computer or TV sure did help a lot.

Eventually, going to bed early became something I looked forward to. It was still time I had to myself, but letting myself go to sleep felt like giving myself a gift. I was letting myself off-the-hook. All those tasks on my to-do list would still be there the next day and my brain and body would have 8 hours of sleep in reserve to tackle things. It made life a lot easier.

This Labor Day, think about what you are doing when you’re not laboring. How are you using your 8 hours of recreation and your 8 hours of rest? What gift could you give to yourself to bring things into balance?

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