How to Rest
Uncomfortable truths that you probably won’t like, from someone who’s been forced to rest a lot
Rest! It’s the best! Or at any rate, rest would be the best if it weren’t so stupidly hard to pull off. Sure, it’s hard to carve out the time – especially in cultures with a centuries-old fetish for productivity and profit, where we’re all supposed to be working and earning or spending money at all times – but that’s not even what I’m talking about when I say rest is hard to pull off. What I’m talking about is how, when we’ve finally managed to set aside some time and we commence resting, the rest isn’t restful and we don’t know how to do it.
The good news is, this isn’t a you or a me problem, it’s a capitalism problem. We’ve been hustling for so many generations, and the hustle has for so long been equated with moral virtue, that the art and skill and discipline (yes, discipline) of rest have been all but lost. As a culture, we suck at resting. And while I don’t have an opinion on whether rest itself is resistance, I do know that we need to rest in order to resist. We cannot strive without ceasing. The pause, the recovery, the taking stock – these are all vital to envisioning and building a more loving world.
Fortunately, I’m here to save the day and share some truths about how to get actually restful rest, but unfortunately, you’re probably not going to like them. In fact, if you’re anything like me, the more exhausted you are, the less you will like this post. Here’s my recommendation: read it anyway, fume away, feel your feelings, recognize the places where you’re blaming yourself (and stop it), where you’re blaming society (and carry on), and where you’re blaming me (feel free, I get it), then bookmark this post for when you’re ready. Because genuine rest is a necessary prescription for a good and happy life, and I’m sorry that what it requires isn’t an easier pill to swallow. Lord knows I wish it were – for my own sake as much as anyone else’s.
Me, I’ve been taking substantive rest periods on at least a weekly basis for the past several years (ever since I first got COVID), and even before that I was living with a then-undiagnosed health condition (hypermobile Ehlers Danlos syndrome1) that had me cycling through frequent, unscheduled, usually inconvenient bouts of physical incapacitation. So I’ve had to become something of an expert on rest, and I’ve slowly come to terms with some realities that are antithetical to the culture we live in and therefore hard to accept. Here are the big ones: 1) rest seems like it should be pleasant, but 2) often it’s not pleasant, and 3) we still need to do it.
This post is for all the people who need to catch up on their rest – which is to say, a great many of us. Much love to the blessed folks (I know and love several) who are not relentlessly tired, whose naps are restorative at 20 minutes, who happily execute four or more major activities in a single day, who relish the thought of international travel, whose vivres bubble over with joie. With all their capacity and pep, these people make amazing aunties, primary caretakers, and community members, and we are all lucky to have them. If you yourself are so blessed, maybe this post will have some useful tips for you, but I’m guessing you don’t really need most of what’s here. Go forth, you beautiful firecracker. See you next week.
At this point, a caveat: there are many physical and mental health conditions that no amount of rest will resolve. If you’re struggling with one or more of these, I’m so sorry. Today’s post may or may not have useful insights for you, but either way, I hope you are able to access competent, empathetic care.
At the far other end of the exhaustion spectrum are us existentially tired people. We are chronically ill, or we’re overburdened with caretaking and other responsibilities while living in a society where social safety nets are actively under attack, or we’ve been screwed over our whole lives by people and cultures and policies and infrastructure and governments that are actively hostile toward people who look or sound or move or love like we do. Or maybe, dear lord, all of the above. And maybe a lot of us are also tired because we’re expected to carry on as normal while living under conditions of massive, cascading polycrisis.
Anyway, a lot of us need rest – some very critically indeed.
At this point, I want to emphasize that many of us live in societies that are actively hostile to rest. The United States is one of the worst culprits but many countries prioritize profit and productivity over human thriving. Although primary caretakers and (under)paid careworkers are particularly likely to have their labor exploited, it’s hard for all kinds of people to secure time off. Policies and infrastructure make it actively hard to cultivate a village, but even people who live in intergenerational co-housing or multiparent households or have lots of loadbearing aunties nearby struggle to find the space and time to rest. So we need to hold in view that a little rest is better than none. We just do our best. It’s not our fault when rest is structurally inaccessible.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of fears that keep us from taking a break even when, actually, we could (especially if we are brave enough to ask for help). Me, I sometimes keep working when I shouldn’t – even after several years of learning my lesson – because I worry that otherwise I’ll never make enough money to retire. The tireder I am, the more susceptible I am to my worries. I worry I’ll be impoverished in my old age (although I do keep putting my trust in the interdependence retirement plan). I worry my newsletter will fail. I worry that if people find out how much time I spend resting, they won’t understand and they’ll think I’m lazy and they’ll laugh at me behind my back. I worry that too much resting means something fundamental about me as a person – that I’m lazy, that I’m letting down the people in my life, that I lack moral fiber. And I’m not as worried about this one anymore, but I know it plagues other people: I have worried that if I start resting, I’ll never be able to get my gears in motion again. I’ll be, as the kids say, officially cooked.
Most of these fears are delusional2 – a truth which I can easily perceive when I’m well-rested but which I struggle to hold in view otherwise. Sure, I do need to work enough to make a living, but I have a little savings and access to credit and a lot of people who love me, and going one day or one week or even a month without working won’t mean I wind up on the street. Heck, maybe sometimes someone in my life does make a joke about how much I need to rest, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love me, and if I start feeling truly misunderstood, I can use my words. And I’ve learned from long, involuntary practice that the best way to spring back up and carry on with life is to actually, for reals, get some rest.
Below the paywall, I’ll describe how to discern when we need rest (many of us are surprisingly terrible at this, including me and probably including you), and also how to discern when we’ve actually gotten enough rest (ditto). Then I’ll flag the two main culprits in non-restful rest, both of which I’ve had to confront countless times myself and both which I now notice all the time in other people. Finally, this post’s payload: practical, actionable guidance for how to rest – like, step-by-step, with lists of approved and non-approved activities. I’ll be more prescriptive than usual, but it’s only because I love you and you need to know.
