Settling Sand: The Parasympathetic Nervous System

Sometimes I need to just sit and stare at the wall. I have been jumping from task to task for so long that all the thoughts in my head are swirling and skipping. I've been on autopilot for hours, days and sometimes weeks at a time. When I get five minutes to breathe, if I can be conscious about my choice, instead of numbing with a screen or distracting with some music, I realize that my brain craves nothing.

Like a snow globe constantly agitating on the dashboard of a fast moving car, my whole body is foggy with emotional and psychological snow. What I really need is to be still.

The other day I came home from such a stint and found my kitschy sand puzzle perched on my window sill--the kind where water and multicolored sand occupy the thinest of layers between two pains of glass. Tilting it even the slightest bit shifts the bubbles and gravity enough to turn the whole setting into an entirely different picture... over the course of about half an hour. You can shift and walk away, finding a surprise new orientation when you return or you can do what I did: sit and watch each grain of sand find a new home on the bottom of the scene.

I wasn't mezmerized or bored. It was the slightest, silent visual shift that kept the running part of my brain focused enough to let all the backlogged thoughts and emotions sort and resolve. I found myself feeling things I hadn't had time to feel, thinking things I hadn't had time to think, and praying over things that had previously been merely stressful concerns. I was coming back into myself.

There is a function of the autonomic nervous system that social scientists refer to as "rest and digest." Its fancy name is "parasympathetic." It refers to the state a person achieves when their body relaxes enough to calm down and effectively heal after being amped up. The gut recognizes the calm as a signal to actually absorb nutrients and move to let go of the junk it doesn't need. Nervousness evaporates and tension subsides. The mind in turn goes soothingly quiet.

This is what our culture needs. More value on the time it takes for sand to settle. This is what hobbies like fishing and gardening do for us. They are slow, tedious, and relatively boring compared to the onslaught speed of media and performance expectations.

We'll never stop needing to move in the world. There is work to be done and joy in that work! But without regular resistance and intentional rest we risk losing the very joy that comes standard with human life.