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Opinion
The phrase “resting on your laurels” hasn’t all the time been a criticism; as soon as it was some extent of reward. Instead of suggesting complacency and laziness, it was a public recognition of accomplishment. In Ancient Greece, athletes had been awarded wreaths of laurel leaves – also called bay leaves, the type you pop right into a soup or inventory.
The time period had arisen from mythology and the age-old phenomenon of spurned males actually not choosing up the vibe. In brief, the god Apollo had the hots for the attractive river nymph Daphne, and pursued her doggedly regardless of her lack of curiosity. One day, when he was chasing her and had simply caught her, she begged her father, the river god, to save lots of her. Naturally, he turned her right into a laurel tree. (To be honest, Cupid, irritated with Apollo, had shot him with a gold-tipped arrow of affection and Daphne with a lead-tipped arrow of repulsion, so this was by no means going to go nicely.)
Apollo tried to salvage this flip of occasions by kissing the tree, whispering: “Since you cannot be my bride, you must be my tree!” He hacked off some branches to make a wreath for his head. Laurels grew to become crowns of victory. From the sixth century BC, bay leaves had been positioned on the pinnacle of each winner on the Pythian Games in Delphi.
Now, with the broad public dissection of The Odyssey, a uncommon box-office triumph, together with discuss of Odysseus’ relentless drive, I’d prefer to counsel we revert to the unique, Grecian which means of this long-misused time period. Tell folks to relaxation on their laurels for a bit! Stick it to the “rise and grind” of hustle tradition, and rejoice a time to pause, regroup, be glad after one thing you’ve completed, as a substitute of maniacally thundering in the direction of the subsequent hurdle.
When Chaucer wrote The Knight’s Tale within the late 1300s, he wrote that when somebody is topped with laurels, he’s “crowned a conqueror [who] lived in joy and honour”. This, for my part, is what the phrase ought to imply: pleasure and honour. You’ve achieved one thing? Rest up, chill out, marinate in that pleasure and honour.
Then, as with so many traditions, issues took a darkish flip in Regency and Victorian occasions. In 1825, The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review advised novelist Maria Edgeworth that regardless of her literary success, she should not relaxation: “We do not affect to wish she should repose on her laurels and rest satisfied; on the contrary, we believe that genius is inexhaustible … For Miss Edgeworth there must be no rest on this side the grave.”
This is so daft. As although it’s a nasty factor to “rest satisfied”. The incontrovertible fact that the which means of laurel-resting has flipped so firmly since its inception is definitely an indication of the ushering-in of hustle tradition following each the commercial and technological revolutions. (Note that the hustle is all the time assumed to happen in jobs exterior the house, regardless of the appreciable hustle inside.)
And anyway, why is Odysseus, a person who left his spouse and son for many years to hold on in different international locations, now being heralded merely as a hero with out the statement that he’s additionally the central determine in a cautionary story?
Ryan Holiday, a bestselling creator and advocate for stoicism, says that those that discover Odysseus inspiring miss the truth that when he arrives residence after a 20-year journey, he shortly activates his heels and goes out raiding in an try and construct wealth. He is stressed, unsated, discontent.
Holiday cites a poem I used to be obsessive about as a young person, and stuffed into my backpack after I travelled: Ulysses by Tennyson. (Read it here.) The previous king is pondering his life and future, his unquiet soul and lack of ability to cease wandering the earth: “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/Life to the lees … always roaming with a hungry heart”. He continues: “I am a part of all that I have met;/Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’/Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades/For ever and forever when I move./How dull it is to pause …”
When I used to be a young person, stomping round Europe with backpack and boots, this starvation for journey mirrored my very own. But now I can higher see that maybe the person wanted to chill out for a bit, spend time along with his spouse and son. Stoics usually recognised Odysseus’ good qualities, reminiscent of a capability to endure and resist temptation. However, as Holiday factors out, Stoics like Seneca objected to the romanticising of Odysseus and thought of his insatiable appetites for movement extra curse than blessing.
Sometimes we overlook the great thing about the pause, particularly after a interval of battle. In the identical approach we inform folks to “move on”, to hurry previous relationships or grief or the ache of giving beginning, we have to have phrases and respect for a interval when a kite lands, having sliced via clouds. To cease, to look in marvel. This doesn’t imply by no means making an attempt once more, not working laborious sooner or later – nor sitting round gloating – simply that, for a interval, you must permit your self to be content material with out punishing your self with the subsequent objective, or measuring your distance from numerous heights that others could have reached.
Surely we are able to settle for that exhaustion doesn’t equate to accomplishment? The computerized response to “how have you been?” shouldn’t be “yeah, crazy-busy, hectic, flat out”.
As Angie Dixon wrote in digital journal OnlySky after being pressured into retirement by incapacity: “The reward for productivity is the expectation of more productivity. You finish one project and receive another. You hit one goal and create a bigger one. There is no finish line. Nobody appears with a certificate declaring that you have finally done enough and may now rest without guilt.”
Well, for those who’d like a certificates, please settle for this column as one. Pin a bay leaf in your hair, or slip it into your pockets as a reminder that you just’ve labored laborious, you’ve cared immensely and that, when the time is correct, you actually ought to go and have some candy relaxation on these laurels.
Julia Baird is a journalist, creator and common columnist. Her newest guide is Bright Shining: how grace adjustments all the pieces.
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