“How many hours do you give daily to God?”
they asked the native in the jungle.
And he answered:
“The whole day.”
“And how much time you devote to work?”
“The whole day.”
“And to rest?”
“The whole day.”

To understand the native, we’ll have to try and see things as they see them. They do not divide the day in businesslike timetables. There is always, of course, for them as for all, a day and a night which nature itself marks in its common course; but not for them the executive’s daily agenda with fixed appointments by the secretary’s hand. The day is one, as life is one and the person is one, and it is the whole person that plunges as one into all that it does, and makes all it does into vital activity beyond all artificial divisions of work and leisure, or class and vacation. The work is done with joy, and so it gives rest; and it is done with commitment, and so it leads to God. No parcelling of time.

They explain this to us with unexpected clarity: he who does not know how to rest while he walks, will never arrive. A little reluctantly we begin to guess what they want to say, and begin to realise how right they are. There is no question of resting by interrupting the walking, by stopping on the way and sitting for a while on the side to relax. It is not that, but simply resting while one is walking; walking in such a way that the walk itself becomes rest instead of fatigue, game instead of duty, relaxation instead of effort. That is the best way to ensure arrival.

The winner in an Australian marathon, which lasted for two consecutive days with intervals in between for meals during the day and sleep at night, was an unknown aboriginal who joined the competition and did not know there were stops to eat and sleep; so he went on running non-stop for the two days, since, apparently, he knew how “to rest while walking”; and he was the first to be surprised when he arrived first and well ahead of all the others who had divided their time between running and resting. We have lost the art of working restfully.

We measure timetables, work against the clock, go on strike to reduce the number of working hours, oppose work to rest, split up the day. And, while doing this, we split ourselves and face different activities with different parts of our being in helpless parcelling. We have lost the totality of being and acting which the so-called primitive men and women had, and we have been the losers in the process. We work so that we may rest, and we rest so that we may work. That is, we are always doing something in order to do something else without ever being really present to ourselves in what we are doing. Shortcut to schizophrenia.