The Rebelliousness of Rest

A recurring memory from my years of teaching is of the first staff meeting in the autumn term when everyone returned from holidays. People always looked so different. Having staggered out of school at the end of the summer term haggard and exhausted, we would all bounce back into school in September full of vitality, energy and health. ?Because we’d rested.

When I first left the classroom in 2012, I spent a lot of time resting. I’d moved to Tanzania and found myself without a job or direction, as I recalibrated my focus and purpose in life. During those first few months, I’d spend hours sitting under the mango tree in my garden, drinking tea and thinking whilst watching the ants milling around on the dusty earth. It was this time of non-doing and rebellious rest that completely transformed my life.

We’re human beings, not human doings

There is something of a toxic urgency about modern-day life. It centres around a culture of ‘doing’, focused on ways of living that cause us to overwork, under-rest and ultimately burn out. Lives soon become centred around work, with days built around productivity, to-do lists and a mindset that sees always the scarcity of time. By stepping out of the daily grind and moving beyond the bounds of our capitalist culture, there is a profound recognition of just how powerless this way of living makes us. When there’s no time to rest, there’s no time to reflect, to question, to reimagine, to be. There is simply doing, more doing, some sleeping, coffee and ever more doing.

I remember as a child being so furious about the idea of retirement. It made absolutely no sense to me why we would spend our entire adult lives griding away each day, to then stop work and have a nice time when we are entering old-age. This same feeling of rebelliousness returned as I sat watching ants each morning in Tanzania, as I began to recognise how absurd our modern culture had become, built around a system of productivity, output and never-doing-enough. “We’re human beings, not human doings” – a maxim a dear friend often spoke to me, and yet the stories our dominant culture has shaped our lives by puts all of the praise on the doing and all of the shame on the being.

To be honest, for a while during those first months in Tanzania, it did feel almost shameful to slow down. When speaking with friends or family on the phone and they’d ask what I’d been doing all day, when I’d answer “Just sitting,” their responses were loaded with silent judgement. And yet the more I sat watching those ants, and the more I rested, the more conscious and rebellious I became.

Rest is an active verb

Rest, in its simplest form, is an act of resistance (as Tricia Hersey shares so powerfully in her writing and activism). Slowing down moves us away from trying to operate at machine-levels of productivity, and instead helps us to become more human. It is?a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. My life changed profoundly when I started to slow down, as I was suddenly able to step back from the business of day-to-day life and start to see the bigger picture. I began to question everything – from the systems we live our lives by to the stories that shape our mindsets and culture to the daily habits that we call 'normal'. I began to realise and experience the liberation that comes through rest and the sheer rebelliousness that comes when you carve your life around being rather than doing.

Strange as it may sound, rest is also incredibly active. When we slow down we are able to pay attention to what is happening in front of our eyes. It allows us to widen our awareness, sharpen our focus and become much more present in the world.?As I sat day after day watching ants, I found my understanding of the world completely changed. I started to notice things I’d not seen or thought about before. I began paying attention to what was happening around me. I began to ask deeper questions, see patterns and connections and slowly unravel myself out of the cultural stories which had bound my ways of thinking into an open expanse of possibility.

Reclaiming our ‘enoughness’

During this time of slowing down, I wrote a book called Enough?!. It was an exploration of what it means to be human, questioning the bounds of a capitalist culture and digging down to the roots of a life well-lived. I spent months reading, reflection, questioning, unlearning and reimagining – rewriting the story of my own life as I poured the words onto the pages. From that book and that deeply reflective process, ThoughtBox emerged, and along with it the invitation for fellow teachers and students to be thinking outside the box, taking time to reflect, question, daydream and re-imagine what it means to be human and flourishing.

Money and time are the traps of our capitalist culture. It is a luxury to not have to 'work', not earn money to pay the bills, not be part of the system that tells us we can never have enough, do enough or be enough. I made the decision to give up life’s luxuries, live as simply as I could and survive on the money I could earn through a few hours of teaching and some odd jobs each week. This afforded me the time to write, reflect and begin building the foundations of ThoughtBox and our initial offerings to the world. Don’t get me wrong - this was not an easy decision or pathway by any means. I sacrificed a lot, ate a lot of rice and beans and lived incredibly simply for many, many years. In many ways, I still do. Yet it was also the best decision I ever made, for it gave me the freedom to live. It also allowed me to recalibrate what matters in life and find deep contentment with a sense of my own ‘enoughness’.

Treating each other and ourselves with care isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to thrive. Resting isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human. ―?Tricia Hersey,?Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

When I returned from Tanzania and re-entered life in the west, I was determined to hold onto this rebelliousness and made it a fundamental part of how I live and work. Each morning, I spend two hours just being before even thinking about opening the laptop or going to work. I go for a walk in the woods, practice yoga and sit on my porch in the garden each morning, simply taking time to notice, to listen and to be in the world. During the day ‘doing time’ is interspersed with time for being - taking regular walks, drinking coffee in the garden, taking time to reflect and to notice.

As an organisation, we practice what we preach by embedding these same practices (what we've shaped into the Triple WellBeing mindset) into our daily lives and work rhythms. We have an hour’s reflection time built into our daily rhythm– full permission to just be with no output or agenda, We spend time out in nature every day and tend to our own needs as a matter of priority. Over the years, I have witnessed constantly and consistently the abundant power of rest, for all of the creative ideas that formed ThoughtBox and that form our work in the world have emerged through these times of not-doing – times when, rather than staring at a blank computer screen with a bulging to-do list we are instead just quietly daydreaming ideas into reality.

Resourcing ourselves for the journey ahead

This August we’ve taken offline to read, reflect, listen to podcasts and ponder – giving ourselves permission to be away from the laptop, be outside and claim the spaciousness to pay attention to life as it unfolds within us and around us. We’re constantly reflecting on how to align the way we work to the natural rhythms around us – right now the invitation is to be outside and we’re taking that as often as we can. We’re recognising that resourcing ourselves is the only way we can be a resource to others – and so self-care needs are a priority, tending to what we know helps us each to flourish so that in turn we can support others and the rest of nature to thrive. This notion of resourcing sits at the heart of our Triple WellBeing framework and helps shape and support how we move through life, caring for ourselves, others and the planet.

We were not born to centre our entire existence around work and productivity, yet there is an oppressiveness that pervades our capitalist culture which prevents us from looking up long enough to see the power we each hold to reclaim our right to be human and live as humanely as we can. It takes constant courage to move against the dominant culture and carve out a slower way of life, and I have learned to develop a very thick skin and a very strong heart over the years. I have also learned how to carve out a life that is centred on livelihood, rather than productivity and that has found such contentment with my own sense of ‘enoughness’ - moving away from the judgement of others towards a strong sense of peace within myself.

Rest is rebelliousness. It’s not something that is given to us within our culture, but is something we all own and can start reclaim to help find a pathway back to our humanity.