Adequately Wonderful

How does a restless soul learn to find peace? MARY-LOUISE PARKER challenges herself to master the art of taking it easy (or at least to take it a little bit easier)

- Mary-Louise Parker

It’s the wee hours of 2018, and resolutions are shiny enough to still believe in. This year, two of my top goals are to quit doing stuff and to be more listless.

Sometime around 2005, relaxing became completely exotic, an anti-pastime, and I was a rank amateur. It knocks me out when I hear someone say, “I’m just going to take it easy.”

What do they mean? Take what easy? Life? And which part? The part where you could die without having finished your thank-you notes?

To take it easy I imagine you have to stop thinking and doing, and generally I’m doing more than a human should— or I’ve shut down entirely, leading people to snap their fingers in my face to ask where I just went. I’m pretty sure I know how I got like this but sometimes worry I can’t change it.

Living in New York City has not helped. I find that I slow down the most when I’m closer to the Indian Ocean. In Africa I can actually take a nap, which has happened in the United States maybe three times this millennium. My 11-year-old daughter was born in Ethiopia and has a respect for relaxation built into her DNA. She can luxuriate in a task and not feel as if she’s missing something somewhere else; she’ll spend an hour lovingly arranging crackers on a tray. “Why isn’t my brother more open to the idea of the cheese plate?” she’ll muse, gazing at the layers of Gruyère she’s made into sculpture. She goes after life with an amazing lack of panic, and it makes sense that one of the rituals of her birthplace, the coffee ceremony, focuses on how rather than what.