Savoring the power of a rest

MIRA SUCHAROV

My six-year-old daughter has started to unlock the world of piano. Examining a piece of written music recently, she puzzled over the last bar. “How can there be a rest at the end of a song?” While musically unremarkable, I think the question is philosophically fascinating, with hidden lessons for everyday life.

As anyone who has studied Western music well knows, musical notation is divided into bars of even rhythm. This might mean – as in the case of “Old MacDonald” – that a rest is placed at the end of a piece to fill in the final beat where no note is played. (Think “E-I-E-I-O.” Rest!) The final rest lets our body and spirit finish taking in the music, even where there is nothing to be heard. We listen to the silence before applauding the musicians or bowing to our audience.

What if we turned this into a daily maxim – “savor the final rest”? What could life look like?

Perhaps the most obvious implication would be that we would really listen to each other. By this I mean engaging in empathy rather than doling out measured sympathy. Empathy and validation are much talked about these days on the parenting circuit. But practising it is more difficult than preaching it. (To wit: “I can see you’re upset, but ...” is often heard by parents to frustrated kids. As a substitution for really working at feeling a child’s emotions in the moment, these sorts of phrases can sound more belittling than empathic.)

True empathy means being not only a friendly ear to our friends, family and acquaintances, but a whole self, ready and able to absorb the experience of others. Jewish custom sometimes gives us guidance on this issue.

In one experience I had paying a shiva call, I found the religious norms both enlightening and confusing. The custom of not speaking until the bereaved has spoken can be quite helpful, as my rabbi pointed out during one sermon, in meeting people where they are at. But unaware of the custom of reserving special low chairs for direct mourners, I once tried to comfort a grieving family friend by joining her on a small stool. Another guest swiftly instructed me to move to the sofa, where I wouldn’t be marked as among the bereaved. But I had instinctively thought the low stool to be the place where I could best achieve empathy with my grieving friend.

Where practising empathy can be the most challenging is in empathizing with the experience of someone else where you are negatively implicated. Who really wants to admit that they were the cause of another’s discomfort? It is easier to blame and deflect. Pausing to appraise the effect of our actions on others helps unravel negative social spirals, even where they were unintended.

Savoring the rest would also help us evaluate our actions toward ourselves. Did what I do last night further my personal material, social or spiritual goals, or set me back? How can I improve for next time?

Conversely, it would also enable us to live in the moment. Trying to achieve mindfulness ultimately helps us acquire the energy to achieve our goals in a focused way – or notice new goals that might be better than the ones to which we were clinging.

Similarly, we could listen to who we really are and, therefore, know what we really want out of life, as Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, said about her year-long quest to increase her happiness quotient. Rather than chasing golden calves, we can force ourselves to follow our authentic dreams.

On another note, savoring the rest reminds us to appreciate esthetic principles of rule-based forms and free-flowing beauty. Sometimes beauty relies on ordered symmetry and, at other times, it draws from imbalance. The variance may rest with the beholder or there may be more universal rules of esthetics, such as the spatial “golden mean” that defines good design: spacing things according to thirds is said to be pleasing to the eye.

The rest mark completes the bar, as the rules of music notation require. The rest, therefore, reminds us of the importance of encoded language – the need to communicate our desires through accepted channels of discourse or else risk engaging in a dialogue of the deaf. Here, dialogue and negotiation are certainly preferable to violence.

Finally, by leaving an unheard beat, a final rest enjoins us to appreciate the beauty of asymmetry. We can take chances on abstraction where the concrete normally reins; we can enjoy nature in all its perfect imperfections; and we can try to accept ourselves as we are.

Mira Sucharov is associate professor of political science at Carleton University, and is currently writing a book on nostalgia and political change.

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