#07 The Revolutionary Act of Resting
You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.
We celebrate the cities that never sleep, the always-on nature of news, the dopamine-induced doom scrolling that robs us from the very rest we need.
As long as there is no pause, we are not humans. Rest is what makes us alive. Greater than any artificial intelligence.
Dr Clarrisa Pinkola Estés, in The Joyous Body, speaks of the “companion,” the one that has a wisdom and intuition of its own, the body that accompanies us through all our lives, loving us and helping us be alive, be human. We repay it by abusing it - over eating, over drinking, over- and under-moving it, howling against it, and, most pernicious of all, overworking it.
It’s particularly pernicious because we have collectively agreed to pay the cost of success - work long and hard and the powers that be might reward you (he is a machine!). Of course, they can always replace you with robots - which mean, in the original Czech robota, “forced labor,” but hey - no one is forcing you, right? At least, not when you’re slaving away to the algorithms (on the giving or receiving end.)
We must break this paradigm.
Friendship with Darkness
The signs of burnout and overwork are very well documented, but as David Whyte puts it, one way to identify it is noting when you resent slow moving people - the old man in the airport, the wheelchair lady at the restaurant, the foreigner struggling to make himself understood at the counter.
Are you really late, is your time really that more important, will the project really fail if you don’t take immediate action? Or are you just so used to moving, to moving ever faster actually, that you are in fact afraid of who you would find when you finally slowed down?
Resting is a revolutionary act. Not only because it breaks with the toxicity of a always-on society, but because that’s the only place where you can work on the things that really matter - on yourself.
WIIFM
Take your life back. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t work hard - you must, but it must be for the right reasons, for something that makes sense for you, that transforms the world for the better. You are given a body to transmute the world, so stop seeing it as something you own and start seeing as someone you owe respect, reverence, and rest. To be at your best, you need rest. To have a clear mind, you need rest. To know who you are, you need rest.
Stop playing small. Take rests.
Sweet Darkness
David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.