Working on Resting

Take this as a sign to lay down.

Yesterday afternoon, instead of doing the dishes, I took a nap. Simple as it may seem, it was a truly radical act. Last year, I read Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, and it altered my brain chemistry. Sure, I knew that rest was important, that my worth was not tied into my productivity, but I could never quite integrate it with my most troublesome inner adversary: my inner capitalist.

Let’s discuss this little devil, the ambition goblin, my toughest critic. Maybe we all have one, maybe not, but I’ve given it a name to separate it from myself. It’s a result of modern conditioning and not part of my true essence as a human being; something that helps me cope with the state of the world so that maybe I can live in it without feeling completely lost.

And that was one of the biggest lessons I took away from Rest. Put all of society and civilization down for just a moment, you are a being with a body. You deserve rest because it is your right as a being in a body, not because it helps you be a more productive member of the human race. My inner capitalist often forgoes those kinds of simplicities.

Even today, I began writing this and stopped myself just a few sentences in. Yes, to my core, in the most genuine sense, I am a writer. But it’s the inner capitalist that draws me to the computer to lock in before I have even set foot outside in the open air. I began typing and suddenly stopped. I need to sit in the sun and call my grandmother. It’s a warm Saturday afternoon in Southern California’s winter. We talked for forty minutes.

I am working on resting. It has entirely changed the course of my life… and helped me realize that leisure is one of my core values, along with longevity and legacy. It’s also changed my relationship with my inner capitalist, who used to be a dominant force at the inner helm. Now, it’s more like a board member, sitting around the table with the likes of my true Being, inner child, and eighty-year-old self. I contain multitudes.

Taking a nap in the middle of the day with a sink full of dishes was an act of protest to remind the inner capitalist that they are not the boss anymore. As I drifted off, I thought of one of the most memorable messages that Hersey shared about her work; that her ancestors, her soul’s essence, communicated directly through her when she was laying down, when she was resting.

It’s so true. Don’t the answers seem to come to us when we aren’t even expecting it? It’s usually what comes after the thinking, the being, that brings clarity to a problem or situation. It’s the Power of Now. Another book that radically transformed my brain chemistry. I’ve read it several times over the years, and even attempted to again last year, but something didn’t click. My best friend, a brilliant somatic-medical-anthropologist, helped me connect the dots. I needed to draw my attention into the body, not the mind.

That’s when the Rest Is Resistance framework came into practice. In case you forgot, we are not alive to work and clean. Groundbreaking, I know. It’s easy to forget when we have to sacrifice our time and bodies to make a living, are encouraged to monetize our creative hobbies, have unlimited access to the entirety of available human knowledge, are bombarded with information and advertisements, are never unplugged and available 24/7… the list goes on. Many of us, myself included, actually feel guilty for resting, because of the inner capitalist, who says that you are not enough unless you are suffering, and even then, you must work harder… a cycle that never seems to have an end point.

Even self-care and wellness have been tainted by the inner capitalist. Selling products like organic mattresses, mouth tape, and magnesium powders in an effort to continue the narrative that you are not enough, not worthy of rest, unless you do it in the most optimized fashion. I promise you; you can begin your rest resistance, your journey back into your body, for free by laying down, right now.

I am not advocating for the complete destruction of the inner capitalist, in fact, I think it’s healthy to have an open relationship with it. You can let it be an advisor to you, but it doesn’t have to steer the ship. You can say no to it. You are a human being first. Not a machine or a to do list. Yes, a level of strategy and productivity are necessary to walk through the world, and yes, you are, obviously, allowed to have ambitions. I want to be rich, retire early, and create generational wealth; but I also want to live. Not the kind of living where you check off bucket list items, flaunt your possessions, and have a story about a trip abroad for every occasion, but the kind where I enjoy my time slowly and remember every bit of it. The kind where I am intentional with everything I do and leave lasting impressions on people’s hearts wherever I go.

Most nights I have a hard time falling asleep because my mind is so active with questions about everything I have ever done, and will ever do, in my life (just girly things). Put all of that down for a moment and be a human, an earthly body in need of rest. I settle into my body and am there with myself completely, temporarily lifted from the weight of an overactive mind and an overexploited era. It works like a charm every time and I fall asleep.

I’m really not sure where I am going with this. I just know that I want to shout this from the rooftops, that Rest IS Resistance. I am, in real time, deprogramming the propaganda passed down to me that I am not enough. Before this framework, I was under the impression that only through hard work and suffering was I in the running to be enough for this world. Now I am sure of it that that just isn’t the case. I have a body, I am alive, I am present in this moment, and I know for certain that I am enough, that I am worthy of rest and to simply exist in my body.

I am still working on resting. I won’t go into detail about my shortcomings and all the ways that my inner capitalist is still a dominant force in my world. I just know that rest has positive ramifications for every aspect of your being if you allow it, if you can dethrone your inner capitalist. After all, it’s not the inner capitalist that says I need the kitchen to be cleaned so I can feel more at peace with the energy of the space. It’s the inner capitalist that pushes you to keep cleaning the kitchen long after your back starts aching, or you’re ready for lunch, or you need a nap first. Once we can bring more awareness back into the body, we can learn to decode who is saying what.

It was simply an added bonus that after my nap, I was more inclined to clean the entire kitchen (long overdue) than to just do the sink full of dishes. Again, the point of rest is not to be more productive, it is to come back into your divine, yet earthly, body; and therefore, to live a much more mindful and enjoyable life, free from the noise that society has constructed to tune out our inner knowing. Your cells are speaking to you constantly, but can you hear them? If not, it might be a good time to lay down. But I don’t have time! Is that you, or your inner capitalist speaking? Just a thought.