Rest, recharge, renew — seeking solace in testing times
The body tells us when we have reached our limits. We should learn to listen
Lately, no matter where I happen to be on my travels, when someone has asked me how I’m doing or vice versa, the word “tired” has featured somewhere in the response. In a more challenging week there might be a rally of exchanges, where we go back and forth for a few minutes about feelings of exhaustion, and what we wish we could do about it, like “sleep for two days straight”.
I’ve been thinking about how often over the past few years we’ve been answering questions about our wellbeing by describing some variation of fatigue. Maybe it’s just me and the people I’m engaging with. But I suspect it might be true for others as well. We have all to varying degrees been exposed to stresses and challenges as a result of political tensions, economic shifts, intensifying climate calamities and a world seemingly in disarray. These realities, coupled with the daily pressures we all face, have made me wonder if we’re paying enough attention to the reasons for this tiredness, and what, if anything, there is to do about it.
The 1882 work “Seamstress, Whit Sunday Morning” by the Danish genre painter Wenzel Tornøe shows a young woman who has fallen asleep in the middle of her work. She sits at a small table laden with fabrics and a sewing machine. There is a lighted lamp on the table that suggests she has been working in the early morning darkness. But now, the sunlight falls across her sleeping face and the wall on which her head leans. She is wearing a blue apron over her brown dress, and on her lap is the jacket she’s been working on.
The title implies that she has been making clothes for Whit Sunday, and this scene reminds me not just of the fatigue that comes from pushing ourselves beyond our limits, but also of the commitment that is involved in sustaining communities — even when it comes to celebratory events — and that often goes unrecognised.
This type of tiredness will be familiar to many of us. Driven perhaps by a sense of obligation, sometimes guilt, sometimes just not feeling that there is enough time to do it all, we so often push our bodies and minds beyond the obvious warnings that they need rest.
I found this painting particularly endearing because it captures so well that sense of wanting to get just one more stitch done, and it reminds me that it is a blessing that our bodies have their own boundaries. Even when we try to ignore signs of exhaustion, at some point our physical selves will win the fight over the desire to keep working.
“Despair” is a late 18th- or early 19th-century work by Bertha Wegmann, a Danish artist with Swiss roots who, among other accomplishments, was the first woman to hold a chair position at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In the painting, a girl or young woman lays her upper body across a table and buries her head between her arms. She is wearing a loose white top that might be a nightgown, and around her waist is a blue cloth that looks like a blanket. Her outfit gives the impression that she has neither bathed nor changed out of her nightclothes. But light has filled the room. Who knows how long she has been there or will stay in this position? Perhaps she is only momentarily surrendering to feelings of despair before rousing herself to the day’s demands.
In some ways, Wegmann’s work is similar to the Tornøe painting, but it depicts a very different kind of exhaustion. There is nothing in the room to suggest the figure has been working, or even that anyone else has been present. The room is empty. The figure’s hidden face creates a distance between her and the viewer, and to me this mimics the way someone can feel distanced from the rest of the world when they are overwhelmed by despair. Such emotional fatigue can feel isolating. Yet the proximity of the figure to us as the viewer creates a kind of intimacy, too: we are on the verge of stepping into this room.
I imagine many of us could at certain points in our lives relate to this painting. It is a wonder to me that the body communicates physically when it has surpassed its emotional capacity. And yet how often do we recognise and respond to the physical cues? In the current era, in which we are both seemingly endlessly busy and dealing with the uncertainties of a challenging world order, how do we identify the cause of our tiredness and best seek to alleviate it?
I love the 2016 textile work “The Dreamer” by the Johannesburg-based artist Billie Zangewa. She makes scenes of ordinary daily life from scraps of silk fabric, with the nuanced understanding that life, just like the formation of silk, is a process.
In this work, a woman wearing a yellow patterned dress and sandals lies curled on her side in a field full of tall pink flowers. Green hedges line the background, and a silver blue sky is stitched above her. She uses something, a scarf perhaps, as a small pillow to cradle her head. She is clearly tired but her posture is that of someone who is wise in listening to the requirements of her body, mind and spirit. Alone in the field, with her eyes closed, she conveys a sense of quiet and momentary disengagement.
This is not a cure for deep fatigue or a quick fix for the accelerating pace of our lives. I suspect that requires a larger decision to stop and reflect on the patterns, routines and habits we permit or have simply fallen into. But Zangewa’s work does remind me that there are moments, and perhaps hours, and even days, when we can make choices that protect our wellbeing, small acts that can help recalibrate us towards more of an equilibrium, even in the midst of ongoing demands and challenges.