Resting is Exhausting

When Harold Timmons retired from his forty years as a middle school math teacher, the universe briefly paused to give him a polite round of applause. His colleagues bought him a gold watch he didn't need, his students gave him a pile of sentimental cards he couldn't throw away, and his wife, Mabel, gave him a week to sit still before she started making lists.

"Now, Harold," she said, tapping a notepad like a conductor preparing for symphony, "we can finally do things."

"Do things?" Harold said cautiously. "I thought retirement was the part where we stop doing things."

"Oh no," said Mabel. "You've been sitting behind a desk for forty years. Time to get moving."

Within a month, Harold had joined the community garden ("mostly we argue about compost"), volunteered at the library ("I accidentally shelved the mysteries under Religion—nobody noticed"), started a woodworking class ("I built a wobbly stool and named it The Philosopher because it keeps you guessing"), and signed up for yoga.

Yoga was the breaking point.

During his first session, he fell asleep in corpse pose and snored himself awake to polite applause. The instructor called it "a beautiful surrender to the moment." Harold called it "a nap that bit back."

But he didn't quit. No, quitting would imply rest, and Harold was philosophically opposed to rest. His friends noticed.

"Harold," said Ed, his old fishing buddy, "you're retired now. Why don't you enjoy some rest?"

"Resting?" Harold said, clutching his gardening gloves like they were evidence. "Resting is exhausting. You ever try doing nothing? It's like being haunted by your own to-do list."

He explained it this way: when he sat down to "rest," his brain started inventing chores. Maybe I should organize my wrenches. Or alphabetize the freezer. Or finally learn the harmonica. Five minutes of "rest" turned into a week-long project.

At one point, Mabel found him repainting the shed—for the third time that season.

"It was glaring at me," Harold explained.

"You can't tell when something's glaring at you," said Mabel.

"Oh, I can," Harold said. "It was that kind of beige that whispers, you've given up."

Eventually, the community started relying on him. The librarian called him "our volunteer of the month" five months in a row. The yoga studio gave him a free mat just for "showing up consistently and confusing people." The community garden built a new compost bin because Harold's "rest projects" kept improving it.

When his daughter called from out of state and asked, "Dad, are you enjoying your retirement?" Harold looked at his calendar. It was a Tetris game of obligations: seed swaps, book drives, tai chi in the park, and a committee to improve the walking trails.

"Enjoying it?" he said. "I barely have time to retire."

Still, Harold insisted he was happy. He said he'd discovered the secret to endless energy: never stop long enough to notice you're tired.

Once, at a neighborhood potluck, someone handed him a folding chair.

"Sit down, Harold," they said. "Take a break."

He looked at the chair the way a marathon runner looks at a finish line they don't trust.

"Thanks," Harold said, "but if I sit down, I'll have to get up again. And frankly, getting up is the hardest part."

So he put the chair back, grabbed a tray of brownies, and went off to distribute them door-to-door "for cardio."

When the local paper interviewed him for a feature called Active Retirees: The Heroes Among Us, the reporter asked him what kept him going.

Harold thought about it, then said:

"Well, I tried resting once. But it took me two days to recover."

(This story is donated to the public domain.)