THE GENTLE RESET
LESSONS:
THE
GENTLE
RESET
In this homestretch before the new year, you have only one job to do: precisely nothing.
- Written by
- Laura Regensdorf
- Illustrated by
- Donald Robertson
Consider the word downtime. For those of us fluent in beautyspeak—as in, you’re on a first-name basis with your derm and send holiday cards to your very favorite facialists—downtime rightfully invokes a certain amount of caution. How tomato-faced will I be after the peel? Is the laser treatment ill-advised before my beach vacation? Can I go right back to the office? Downtime is a drag. It dictates what you can do and when; it’s an imposed limitation, never mind the eventual reward. In some ways this complicates how we think of the downtime that arrives during the end-of-year lull, ostensibly a vacation sandwiched by merriment.
In truth, this downtime, too, requires a tender touch. The pricking assaults of daily life—pings from the inbox, deadline-induced cortisol spikes, news alerts and ads and even group texts vying for attention—take a cumulative toll. We are left feeling sensitized, more porous, in need of soft cocooning. In this framing of downtime, where psychic exhaustion stands in for stressed skin, the usual metaphors apply: Minimize the active ingredients, pile on the soothing stuff. This means canceling plans for a forest-scented soak; it means unplugging the laptop and basking, like a fuzzy chick, in the warm infrared glow of an LED mask. Just maybe it means swiping on a gorgeous berry lip, not for any purpose but your own energizing love for color.
This, people will tell you, is the time to hit reset. But even then, “hit” suggests undue exertion. This is a call to inaction! There are no buttons to push, no keys to tap. Pencils down. There is no doing left to be done. And yet, in all this undoing—save for the gentle application of creams, the easeful lighting of incense—we might find ourselves made whole again.