I don’t think it’s difficult to see how rest can be an important aspect of self-care, and necessary to avoid burnout. However, in Tricia Hersey’s book Rest is Resistance she argues that rest is more than just recovering. Rest is an act of defiance and resistance against capitalist and white supremacist systems that only see people as resources to be exploited, and these systems disproportional impact on Black people and oppressed groups.
Insisting on creating space to rest in our lives is a refusal to accept that our worth is measured by the work we do. It says people already have value, just in themselves.
TRICIA HERSEY: I don’t want to be under the guise of believing that I have to be productive in order to be deemed worthy. I am enough now.
Tricia Hersey, NPR How to think About Rest as a Form of Resistance, 2022
I don’t think this means that all work is bad, or that hard work or exhaustion aren’t sometimes an inevitable part of life, but it does mean refusing to accept that being exhausted or overworked is normal or acceptable.
A climate justice perspective on climate change argues that capitalism, white supremacy and colonialism are the root causes of the current climate crisis. Naomi Klein describes “extractivism”, the economic model of continually taking more resources from the earth to create endless economic growth as “the reduction of life into objects for the use of others” and “the reduction of human beings into either labor to be brutally extracted, pushed beyond limits, or, alternatively, into social burden, problems to be locked out at borders and locked away in prisons or reservations”1Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. P. 169. London: Penguin Books, 2014.. Extractivism is tied up with racism and colonialism as resources have been extracted from colonies, and labour from slavery, and wealth moved to the colonial centres.
Tricia Hersey describes rest as a way of refusing to give her body to the system. She also argues that rest gives us the means to imagine, heal and dream. Allowing ourselves and others to enjoy rest is a rejection of the logic of extractivism. As we’re using these ideas in our efforts against climate change, I want to make sure the original context doesn’t get lost. Dr Sophia Bolt makes this point nicely. She says she’s concerned white people might use a shallow understanding of rest to opt out of anti-racist work2Bolt, Sophia. “Reflections on Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto – Anti-Racism Is Key,” March 2, 2023. https://re-center.org/en/re-imagine-blog/reflections.. A climate justice approach or intersectional environmentalism are ways to do both anti-racist and environmental work at the same time.
How we think about rest, our beliefs, values and practices, and those of the society we live in are tied up with complex issues of inequality. This allows us to rethink the attitudes to rest we may have internalised, and to think about how we can create new ways of acting that address the personal and political at the same time. The Three Spheres of Transformation model helps us to do that by encouraging us to identify the transformations we’d like to see in ourselves, our social structures and systems and practically. It isn’t easy to see the social structures and systems at work in our everyday lives. Unpicking our beliefs and assumptions about the world, challenging them and finding ways to live in tune with our values and hopes for the future is slow work. The three spheres model shows how different kinds of work are needed and interconnected in the fight against climate change.
Ideas for discussion or reflection
- Do you get enough rest?
- What gets in the way?
- How can we make sure we permit ourselves and each other to rest?
- What would it be like if rest was normal and valued in our culture and society?
- How can we begin to start moving in that direction?
Reading
Bolt, Sophia. “Reflections on Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto – Anti-Racism Is Key,” March 2, 2023. https://re-center.org/en/re-imagine-blog/reflections.
Hersey, Tricia. Rest Is Resistance. UK: Mitchell Beazley, 2022.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Penguin Books, 2014.
NPR. “How to Think about Rest as a Form of Resistance,” December 27, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1145716272/how-to-think-about-rest-as-a-form-of-resistance.
Resilience. “Why Rest in Urgent Times?” resilience, December 6, 2022. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-12-06/why-rest-in-urgent-times/.