Why rest is not doing nothing
"It occurs to me that I am resting. It is not the same as doing nothing. Resting like this is something active, chosen, alert, something rare and precious". So writes Katherine May in her book Enchantment. Composers, orators and athletes similarly appreciate the precious nature of rest. Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim observes that what makes music beautiful is the distance between one note and another, what makes speech eloquent is the appropriate pause between words. Elite athletes place as much emphasis on sleep, rest and recovery as they do on training. But does rest feature in daily life for everyone?
The big four
In 1922, Swiss born psychiatrist Adolph Meyer argued that rest should indeed feature. He spoke of how human life was organised around rhythms – "the larger rhythms of night and day, of sleep and waking hours, of hunger and its gratification, and finally the big four-work and play and rest and sleep, which our organism must be able to balance even under difficulty." Balancing needs and demands in this way is indeed difficult, for individuals and societies.
Millions of people around the world are experiencing ill-health and disease that can be attributed, in part, to patterns of daily living and living conditions that do not support wellbeing. Non-infectious diseases like ischaemic heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are forecast to be the top three causes of disease burden worldwide in 2050. Mental disorders are amongst the leading causes of disease burden globally. A greater focus on rest in daily life may be one way to mitigate these risks.
From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, do our busy lives mean we overlook the recuperation benefits of just resting?
The brain at rest
Rest and sleep are often considered to be one and the same. However, they serve distinct purposes and accordingly both merit their respective place in daily life, as Meyer recognised. While the necessity for sufficient high-quality sleep is now generally well understood, although often still difficult to attain, the place of rest in the rounds of activity that make up our days has attracted less scholarly or popular attention, until more recently.
Over the last 20 years, researchers have examined what happens in the brain during rest. In a resting state, awake but not engaging in any focused task or responding to external stimuli, the brain actively connects thoughts and experiences through its default mode network. At rest, when the mind wanders and daydreams, we reflect on our past and present, we think about our future. This regulates our mood and emotions and help us make sense of the story of our lives. If rest enables such vital functions, why do we not place greater value on it?
Unrest
Ironically, it is perhaps this fundamental feature of rest, this inward focus, sense making and reflection that deters us. When we stop and "do nothing", we think about ourselves and the world. Such thoughts can be overwhelming, not least when the world feels increasingly threatening and threatened. Unrest can feel like danger. Psychologist Sandra Parker writes that we are wired to remove ourselves from the discomfort of unrest, perceived as dangerous, with modern life providing innumerable exit routes, diversions and distractions. Making space for rest then means making peace with unrest. When we rest, we can notice sensations in the body, learn to distinguish danger from discomfort and soothe our nervous system.
From RTÉ Radio 1's Reignite, What's the best way to spend your time given we only have 4,000 weeks on Earth? Writer Oliver Burkeman has some pointers.
Too busy to rest
Rest may also induce feelings of stress and guilt as Claudia Hammond found in the BBC Radio 4/BBC World Service The Rest Test, the world's largest ever study on rest, involving more than 18,000 people from 193 countries. Many people feel too busy, that there are simply not enough hours to meet the essential demands of the day, let alone make time for rest. 'To do' lists rarely get done. In part, this is because the possibilities for how we fill our time are boundless and increasingly boundary less. Remember when correspondence from the world beyond the office arrived once per day in the mail? Remember waiting to watch a favourite TV show when it aired once a week….and having to wait a further week to watch the next episode? Television channels stopped broadcasting as night fell. Businesses closed for lunch. Shops closed on Sundays. Nowadays, such external boundaries are fluid or largely absent, instead we must self-impose our own limits.
Rest is radical
Maintaining limits in this way may mean saying no to opportunities, no to requests, no to being 'always on'. It might mean letting go of attaching self-worth to busyness, productivity and self-optimisation, experimenting instead with saying 'I have enough', 'I do enough', 'I am good enough'. Letting go in this way is not a moral failing, observes Madeleine Dore, and may in fact be an invitation to others to stop too. Katherine May recognises that "doing those deeply unfashionable things - slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting - are radical acts these days, but they are essential." Poet David Whyte depicts the potential outcome of such radical acts. "Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way". If this is deemed unfashionable, it's time to start a new trend.
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RTÉ News
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a day ago
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Irish Independent
6 days ago
- Irish Independent
Pegasos assisted dying clinic changes policies after Cavan woman passes away without prior knowledge of family
In early July, Maureen (58) ended her own life in a Swiss facility run by a group called Pegasos, apparently overseen by volunteers she did not know, and a dog, while Spotify played Amazing Grace by Elvis Presley in the background. Her partner Mick Lynch and daughter Megan only found out when a WhatsApp message arrived afterwards from Pegasos. She was then cremated, and the urn containing her ashes was posted home like a parcel containing something bought on the internet. Maureen Slough became tracking number CF128182270CH. In response to queries from the Irish Independent, the clinic said it has now changed its procedures for unaccompanied applicants. It will no longer accept unaccompanied applicants with living family members unless they provide copies of their next of kin's passport and allow representatives of the clinic to meet them in a video call. News of Maureen's death, and the manner in which she died, has once again prompted debate on the divisive subject of assisted dying. 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In other words, they must be of sound mind and be able to trigger the action that will end their lives. Assisted dying in certain circumstances is also legal in New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada and the US state of Oregon. Dignitas is the group that is probably most widely known for providing the service of assisted dying in Europe. 'If my mother provided Pegasos with a phone number for me, why didn't they ring me on that number to find out if I knew of her plan in advance?' Established as a not-for-profit members' society in Switzerland in 1998, between 2003 and 2023 Dignitas provided an assisted suicide service for 13 people from Ireland. Many of its clients, more than a third, travel from Germany, followed by the UK and France. Since its inception, it has assisted in more than 4,000 deaths for people from 67 countries as far away as Peru, Malaysia, Russia, the US and Uruguay. But there are other assisted suicide clinics in Switzerland, and it is the Pegasos group that has been under the spotlight in recent weeks since Maureen Slough's death. It is being criticised for allegedly allowing someone with a mental illness to take their life without the knowledge of her family. The family of UK teacher Alastair Hamilton, who took his life at a Pegasos clinic in 2023, say they were told afterwards by Pegasos that it would change its procedures to ensure that certain family members know of their loved one's wishes before assisting their death. But in January this year, the family of Anne Canning, from Wales, only learned of her death after she ended her life. They say Pegasos said it had attempted to contact a family member. Anne's family argue that 'attempting' to contact someone is not the same as actually contacting them. Now Maureen Slough's daughter Megan is asking the same questions as she holds a funeral service for her mother. Pegasos has said it received a letter from Megan saying she was aware of her mother's wishes, and that it verified the letter using an email address supplied by Maureen. Megan insists she did not write any letter or provide any email address to Pegasos. Whether Maureen herself wrote the letter and created the email account used for 'verification' or not, we will probably never know. But Megan asks: 'If my mother provided Pegasos with a phone number for me, to which a message would be sent following her death, why didn't they ring me on that number to find out if I knew of her plan in advance?' The clinic has now decided that in future it will no longer accept unaccompanied applicants with living family members unless they provide copies of their next of kin's passport and allow the clinic to contact them in a video call. In response to queries from the Irish Independent, a spokesman for the clinic said: 'We take great issue with any allegations that we are acting without regulation or unethically. Pegasos has always complied and will continue to comply with Swiss law without exception.' A Pegasos representative said each assisted death required careful prior assessment and the clinic requested medical and psychiatric reports. The applicant talks to a doctor/psychiatrist during the application process, and is interviewed again by a doctor on the day before the assisted death takes place. The total cost for a voluntary assisted death with Pegasos is approximately 10,000 Swiss Francs (€10,490). 'We have become aware of a few instances, where we had credible assurances by the patient that they had informed family members or had put us in contact with real family members, when in fact they had not, as it later turned out.' In response to these incidents, a clinic spokesman said Pegasos had incorporated additional steps to the application process. A spokesperson for Dignitas told the Irish Independent its own principle is that: 'One should not set upon a long journey without careful preparation and one should not set upon such a journey without having appropriately said goodbye to loved ones. People are always advised to speak with their loved ones, involve them in the process, ask them to be companions on the journey and to be present at a physician-supported accompanied/assisted suicide (PSAS) in Switzerland,' they said. But they add that the freedom and right to shape and determine the course of one's life, in the frame of what the law permits, also includes the freedom and right of a person to choose whom they inform about their decisions, which includes the decision to make use of PSAS. It advises people to speak with their loved ones and involve them in the process. But it says that any organisation, for legal and confidentiality reasons, cannot disclose information and/or data to third parties – be it family or friends or anyone else – without explicit consent of the person concerned. The motives for not wanting to inform family members, and others, may vary. 'They may range from being afraid of negative personal repercussions due to family estrangement, threats, stigma, etc, to wanting to protect loved ones from the negative impact of absurd local laws which threaten with legal consequences those who compassionately support someone to have a legal voluntary assisted death abroad,' the spokesperson said. 'The Swiss non-profit end-of-life-choices support groups, which provide people from Ireland, and any other country, with the option of legally exercising their right and freedom to decide on time and manner of their own end of life, only do so because these countries – in this case, Ireland – deprive people of this right and freedom.' Governments are accused by the group of 'dragging their feet in legalising what a majority of the public wishes for: legal options to end one's own suffering at home'. Back in 2012, university lecturer Marie Fleming and her partner Tom Curran tried to have the law here changed so that Marie, who had a very aggressive form of MS, could be helped to end her own life at a time of her choosing. The case prompted the first real public debate on assisted dying in Ireland. Marie and Tom became the faces of that debate, and they ultimately lost in court. Marie died in December 2013. 'I'm very disappointed that more than 10 years after Marie's death, we still do not have legislation on this,' Tom Curran told the Irish Independent. 'The last government put the committee (on assisted dying) together and it made favourable recommendations, but the new Dáil has sat on that and done nothing.' He also spoke about how the whole arena of assisted dying is full of grey areas, and he said future prosecutions will probably be the way any new law is tested. He feels there needs to be much more discussion about definitions of terms like 'assisting' a person who wants to die, so that there is clarity around that issue: 'Currently it is illegal to 'assist' someone to take their life. But what is 'assistance'? 'If an Aer Lingus pilot knew one of their passengers was going to Switzerland to end their life, would they be 'assisting' them by flying them there? Is the moral support of a loved one 'assistance'? There is no black and white here,' says Curran. 'Suicide has been decriminalised here since 1993, and yet it is a criminal act to assist someone to do something which is no longer a crime. It's a strange law,' he adds. Following seismic shifts in Irish constitutional rights such as abortion rights and the introduction of gay marriage, assisted dying now stands as the next divisive issue that Ireland must confront. Yet, just like those other polarising issues, successive governments have been accused of kicking the can down the proverbial road. Despite various reports, taskforces and proposed Bills, it remains a thorny topic that no one is prepared to ultimately deal with. The case brought by Marie Fleming against the government seemed like the first step along that road. Her legal team claimed the Section 2.2 of the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act, which renders it an offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another, was unconstitutional. This was rejected by both the High Court and the Supreme Court, and the offence still carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. The issue then gathered momentum. In 2015, a private members bill on assisted dying was proposed by ex-TD and minister John Halligan. In 2018, as debate on the issue continued to grow, the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality recommended that the Oireachtas consider referring the issue of assisted dying to the Citizens' Assembly for further consideration. This did not happen. More recently, former People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny sponsored the Dying with Dignity Private Members Bill in October 2020, and the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill in 2024, neither of which progressed. A Special Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying was eventually established in 2023, and it published its 96-page report in March 2024, based on sittings over six months, where they heard from over 70 witnesses, including experts in law, ethics, medicine, disability, palliative care, and psychiatry. The report details 38 specific recommendations for the potential legalisation of assisted dying in specific circumstances, chiefly that the legislation would allow for assisted dying for individuals with terminal illnesses expected to cause death within six months – or 12 months for neurodegenerative conditions. It also recommended the establishment of an independent body to oversee all assisted dying applications, as well as increased funding for palliative care, and enhanced research into economic disadvantage and health inequalities. The recommendations were supported by only nine of the committee's 14 members, and three published a dissenting minority report. In October of last year, however, the Dáil voted to accept the report, with 76 votes in favour and 53 against. Members were allowed a free or 'conscience' vote on the issue. An organisation known as Irish Doctors supporting Medical Assistance in Dying (IDsMAID) represents medical professionals in Ireland who advocate for the choice to access voluntary assisted dying, which they say is now available in 17 countries. A proposed model for how assisted dying might work in Ireland was drawn up by the group following the Dáil acceptance of the Oireachtas joint committee's report. The obvious opponents would be the Catholic Church, but also the palliative medicine community, who have sought to clarify their role and how people are medicated at the end of their lives. Disability rights advocates have also expressed their concerns. Yet public opinion has shifted considerably in the past two decades. An Amárach poll for RTÉ's Claire Byrne Show in 2021 found that 74pc of people would be in favour of legislation that would allow assisted dying under certain circumstances. It seems unlikely, however, that the Government will move forward with any such legislation.
