By Frances Kolarek —

Frances Kolarek-150 wide“Give in to fatigue,” is a most unfortunate figure of speech. It implies that we should ignore fatigue, and go right on pushing ourselves.

I beg to differ. No, I insist on differing. I respect this body of mine too highly. When it tells me, “I need a rest!” I give it a rest, without compunction, spending a full day lazing, in bed, hair uncombed.

Just consider: This body, this 70- 80- or 90-year-old body, has been working, every moment of your life, awake or asleep. Lungs pumping air to aerate our blood that our heart never stops circulating, stomach digesting the food that generates the energy needed to perform these functions. All day, every day, every minute of every day.

Makes your automobile look like a piece of junk, doesn’t it?

In this context, stop and think about giving this incredible machine you live in, a little time off because the older any piece of machinery gets, the more maintenance it requires.

So when your body insists that it needs some time to recharge its batteries, to put air in its tires, and sit in the garage for a day or so, don’t complain that YOU are tired. Give it a rest.

Noted British novelist, 98-year-old Penelope Fitzgerald, recently admitted to her biographer that “a day’s absolute laziness makes me feel guilty, for that is how I was brought up.” We carry the burrs of childhood even into our 10th decade, unable to slough them off!

I buy into my neighbor’s sampler that reads: “My Get up and Go, Got up and Went.” Bye-bye, Get up and Go. You make me tired.