The spiritual remedy for existential fatigue or burnout
More and more people feel exhausted from living, from doing everyday things to simply stay alive: eating, drinking, having a job, paying the rent, among other things. Many feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. And no wonder, since being a decent person requires an enormous vital effort. For those who cultivate their spirituality, it may seem even more utopian to love God and their neighbor, and to maintain a stable commitment to their local church.
In light of this, it has become very common to embrace minimalism and see work as something completely secondary. Some adopt a lifestyle with more free time, others opt to ask for a sabbatical from work. However, the feeling of burnout or chronic fatigue in the face of life does not seem to go away. If, on the one hand, it is true that doing more things is not going to improve our condition, on the other hand, doing less or little does not bring a solution to the dissatisfaction we feel either. How many times have we used our free time to have fun only to end up more tired! Pleasure is often as tiring as work. That said, I don't want to downplay the importance of reviewing our priorities and schedules in order to pursue a more sustainable lifestyle. What I am aiming to do with this brief writing is to highlight the fact that even if we manage to reduce the amount of work and stress, the guarantee of feeling inner peace may still be out of reach.
In my opinion, the central error lies in the fact that people focus too much on the outward aspects of their lives, instead of their inner selves. That is, they seek to change the external—the job, the partner, the country, the house, the hobbies—in order to bring about an inner change in levels of contentment and rest. However, the solution lies in a spiritual experience of our inner self with God.
Let us reflect a little more. Jesus extends an invitation to all those with this kind of fatigue: “29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30). This means that, ultimately, the remedy for emotional and spiritual fatigue is to put ourselves under his yoke. In other words, Jesus uses an instrument of labor (the yoke) as the solution for our weariness.
The yoke was a piece of wood that was placed on the backs of two oxen in order to plow the land. These oxen would pull a heavy instrument that plowed the land with the yoke. Usually, it was a stronger ox along with a younger, inexperienced ox. The purpose of the yoke was, on the one hand, to teach the younger ox to do the work and, on the other hand, to share the load. With this, Jesus teaches us that in one's spiritual interiority lies the answer and the solution to existential fatigue. It is the space in which we carry the yoke of Jesus with Jesus.
Naturally, most of us, when we reflect on the idea of rest, the first thing that comes to mind are those things that bring us pleasure, namely, food, vacation, sex, beach, etc. However, Jesus' solution does not consist of such things, but rather in an instrument of work, which is his yoke. Now, how is it possible that an instrument of work, with which a farmer was extremely familiar, can be used as a symbol for spiritual rest?
In order to understand this extremely complex matter, we must still delve deeper into the meaning of “yoke" for the first-century Jewish mentality. The word “yoke" was used as an idiomatic expression to refer to the teaching of a Rabbi or teacher of the law. This implies, among other things, that all Rabbis had a yoke and, normally, that “yoke" or teaching referred to their particular way of interpreting the Hebrew Bible. According to this, what set Jesus apart was not that he had a yoke or a teaching since, in fact, other spiritual teachers of the time also had a yoke. The great difference of Jesus' yoke or teaching to his disciples, in comparison to the other teachers of the time, was that his teaching or yoke was gentle. In contrast, the yoke of most of the spiritual teachers of the time was characterized by strict observance of the laws and harsh treatment of the body. Jesus distanced himself from this rabbinic practice—which consisted of excessive attention to outward appearances— and, on the contrary, focused on the inner being of the individual.
Understanding this, Jesus offers us his “yoke" as a tool to face the same problems but this time walking by his side, following his teachings by imitating him. It has become quite common to admire Jesus for his teachings, but many refuse to take the next step, that is, to imitate his lifestyle. A way of life that consisted of a deep connection with God and with one's neighbor.
This way of being in the world and existing as spiritual beings means, among other things, to live the same life, along with its difficulties, but from different spiritual coordinates, from a point of reference where Jesus is teaching us to plow the earth correctly. The most essential thing is that we do not throw off the yoke. In this sense, God does not promise us an easy life, but a soft yoke; the yoke of the one who conquered the world and death: Jesus.
