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Dear friends,
It’s December, and if your workplace is anything like mine, everyone is scrambling to meet year-end deadlines and hand over work to colleagues before heading out to winter break. In past years I have tried to manage this increased workload and stress by asking mentees to send me work earlier in December, by blocking off meeting-free time, and by planning way ahead for time-consuming holiday tasks like addressing Christmas cards. This year, I am opting out. I recently read Rest is Resistance, by Tricia Hersey, and it has given me a new understanding about incessant work demands.
The author is the founder of the Nap Ministry. She grounds her work in Black Liberation theology, which, while new to me, shares many tenets with the radical anticolonial ideology I grew up with. She demonstrates the links between our cultural glorification of constant work and racism and worker exploitation. She reframes the idea of rest- not as a luxury but as a necessary tool for “healing from generational exhaustion and racial trauma.”
The idea that our productivity does not determine our worth does seem radical in the face of social messaging urging us to “live the bigger life,” or “sleep when you’re dead.” She reminds us that we don’t rest so that we can be more productive the next day, we rest because we deserve to feel content in our minds and bodies. We don’t earn rest, it is our birthright as humans. Exhaustion should not be our default way of being. In the book’s four sections, Hersey exhorts the reader to “REST! DREAM! RESIST! IMAGINE!” I highly recommend reading it, and I bought it after devouring my library copy so that I can immerse myself in these radical ideas.
This winter, I wish that all of you embrace rest. It is a process to deprogram the ways of thinking and being that have led us to being depleted and exhausted, so don’t be discouraged if resting doesn’t come easily to you. Try it, and let me know how it goes.
As always, be well and keep in touch. Share widely, and sign up at the bottom of the page here if you want these messages in your inbox. Wishing you a peaceful end to the year!
Warmly,
Urmimala