'She wastes time': Learning to let go of 'toxic programming' | Candace McKibben

I remember years ago when Gail Sheehy wrote a popular book titled “Passages: Predictable Passages of an Adult Life.”

An international best seller that has been named one of the most influential books of our time by the Library of Congress, at the time seemed light years away from my everyday existence. Encountering the book in the early '80s, I was trying to juggle seminary, work, a young marriage, and a new baby.

Now that I am closing in on 70 years old, I see the wisdom in paying attention to life passages. Finding the book on my shelf, as I am trying to discern which of my many books to keep and which to find a new home for as we downsize, is but one of many challenges in the phase of life I now face, a phase some years beyond the first 50 years Sheehy covered in her original “Passages” book in 1976.

Up in the attic

While in the attic recently, cleaning out far too many boxes of sermons, presentations, and articles I thought I might read one day, I found a box that was not one I had saved, but that my mother had saved and I inherited. In it I found my baby book.

There were not many entries in the book, which seems understandable to me knowing how busy my mother stayed with her full-time job, her sewing, cooking and cleaning, her church responsibilities, her parenting, and her role as a wife. But I did find an envelope tucked in the book from my first-grade teacher at Fishweir Elementary School in Jacksonville, addressed to my mother.

Mrs. Bowman was a strict, no-nonsense teacher who taught her first-graders how to divide. Yes ma’am. I remember she made those of us cursed to eat the cafeteria food clean our plates, and every child had to drink every drop of milk. Since I did not like milk at all, it was a daily reminder of just how cruel first grade could be.

I was anxious to open the envelope and read the letter from this teacher who, to her credit, taught us so much so early and who only popped my hand with her ruler twice, as I recall. Her letter was brief and to the point. “Dear Mrs. Carter, Candy is an above average student, but she wastes time. Please contact me at any time with your concerns. Sincerely, Pearl Bowman.”

A time to play

When I read it, I laughed out loud. But the more I reflected on this succinct capture of my first-grade self, I sensed a deep sadness. How do you “waste time” when you are 6 years old?

I can imagine my mother, who only wanted the very best for her children, better than she had been afforded due to a lack of resources in the poverty and rural setting in which she was reared, taking quite seriously this deficit in her young daughter. I do know that I have been busy not wasting time for as long as I can remember.

I have been thinking of how important it is for adults to be careful about what we say to and about the children with whom we have connection. And how important it is to challenge the highly promoted so-called virtue of “productivity.”

Rest as revolution

In a recent re-airing of an October 2022 Code Switch Life Kit episode on National Public Radio, I heard an interesting interview with the “Nap Bishop.”

Also featured in the New York Times in October 2022, Tricia Hershey, at the release of her book, “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto,” anointed herself with this title after a realization that came to her during seminary at Emory in Atlanta, when she claims she was “bone tired.”

She sees rest as a revolutionary way to push back on America’s obsession with productivity at all costs.

In this month when we are celebrating Black history, it felt relevant to hear her tell of how she examined the life of her father and grandmother, and believes her beloved father died early in his fifties because of his commitment to work when he was exhausted and her grandmother lived much longer because of her resolve to rest, taking a half hour each day on the sofa to shut her eyes and meditate.

Hershey says she remembers tiptoeing around the house so as not to disturb her grandma. It was an early lesson in the power of resisting outside demands in service of oneself. She believes allowing ourselves to rest when we are weary is a form of resistance.

'Toxic programming'

In an archive library at Emory, Hershey studied “Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies.”

She speaks of the powerful, haunting documents around the sin of slavery she read. Learning about the brutal origins of capitalism, and the role her ancestors were forced to play, has deeply impacted her and informed her own theology of resisting pushing through exhaustion, something her ancestors were denied.

Her book is a New York Times bestseller and in her interview with NPR’s Code Switch Life Kit about the book, these are the words of the Nap Bishop that caught my ear and heart. She asked the interviewer, Shereen Marisol Meraji, who confessed that she herself was exhausted, if she was from an immigrant family, and the two of them commiserated over the ways in which they heard as children that opportunities would dry up if they did not work 10 times as hard as classmates to get ahead.

Hershey said, “All of us are holding onto these toxic programming ideas, but the major thing and what’s so beautiful is, that the awareness of it is increasing,” helping people to embrace their humanness a little more.

It felt like the Nap Bishop was speaking directly to me as I was driving down Mahan to my next appointment, one of too many important concerns I have willfully and joyfully taken on or continued in my so-called retirement.

I realized that I am holding on to a “toxic programming idea” from my first-grade teacher, an idea I have been trying to reprogram in counseling for a long time, unsuccessfully. I remember in seminary being challenged by my pastoral care professor about my “workaholism.” He warned of its seductive nature as one of the few addictions that is praised and encouraged.

Joy and purpose

It seems Gail Sheehy stayed busy throughout her 84 years writing about other adult passages, including an excellent book about the passages of being a caregiver.

In another of her 17 impactful books, “New Passages,” Sheehy writes about living in what she calls “second adulthood,” where we begin to understand we are not immortal and have a need to find meaning.

The meaning I hope I can finally find is that rest is not only a human need, it is a human right. While not quite ready to nap, I am ready to waste a little time. I am praying that we all might become aware of “toxic programming ideas” we might need to let go of to live life with greater joy and purpose.

The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 'She wastes time': Learning to let go of 'toxic programming''