Siesta…. A forgotten word in today’s mad rush hour.

My earliest recollections of siesta ( early afternoon nap) were in childhood when my parents would force me and my siblings to sleep in the sultry afternoons. I also remember my father taking a siesta in the afternoon after a lazy lunch; eat, drink and sleep used to be the motto in those days. In the pre-industrial era people performed fewer solitary tasks. Many years later in the eighties when I took up an assignment with Arvind Mills Ltd as their Marketing manager, this phenomenon appeared again. After a sumptuous lunch in the Executive dining room, I found an ante-room where there were rows of easy chairs (chaise) recliners on which all senior managers had a brief siesta after the lunch break.

Today as we multitask ourselves with cell phone, I-pad and Kindle, the mind is constantly whirling from twitter to texts without the gentle mental drift of day dreaming like in days of yore. E-mail, SMS, Twitter, fax and its ilk have reduced communications to zero, at the same time increasing its speed. Like nuclear energy, it may some day do something for us homo - sapiens consume us! Reminds me of the Zen master who became dejected upon attaining “Satori” – (knowledge), for he had nothing more to look forward to.

The old saying “mad dogs and English men go out in the noon day sun” strikes me as an archaic ‘verily”, as post luncheon sessions induce a state of comatose – or torpor – a state of mental and mortal inactivity with a suspension of sensibilities. This lethargy can be seen in all shops in Italy and Mexico as well as the Middle East where all activity ceases between 2.00p.m to 4.00p.m.

John Plotz an English professor calls it an illness (“noonday demon”) that befalls priests, pastors and bishops after a boring Latin prayer followed by a communal lunch. Plotz goes on to state that the desert fathers, monastic monks and nuns used to retreat into their cells or chambers to labor and meditate on matters in the spiritual realm, even in the fourth century. So day dreaming for which I have been rebuked on many occasions is not bad at all.
Acedia – as per the oxford dictionary terminology is – apathy and inactivity in the practice of a virtue. However sloth and gluttony are also a part of the seven deadly sins. Sloth suggests a sluggish, indolent, disinclination to work or exert oneself after a heavy meal it cannot be a sin its just simple pro-crastination.! – The anti-thesis of precision and fastidiousness.
In the Benedictine monastery, detachment was a self disciplinary exercise, which kept monks and nuns from temptation and situated their minds only on divine tasks and their bodies in the right place, so that they can leave behind continence – (the essence of self constraint in sexual matters), giving them the stoic demeanor, unaffected by pleasure or pain. These days when attention span is at an all time low, if our mind wanders to daydream, it is called a psychological distraction or medically labeled as ADHD ( Attention deficient hyperactivity disorder) a sort of behavioral illness.
The supposedly great misery of the 21st century despite all this internet technology is the lack of time itself or our sense of that – not a disinterested love of science or religion and certainly not wisdom. Why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of mankind to finding faster ways of doing things. Its seems as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer no to perfect humanity, but a perfect lighting flash. The one commodity that is becoming scarce is the leisure to enjoy life or a simple siesta!