Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

by Tricia Hersey

Deep eye contact. Laughing intensely.

Grind culture harms the community by making it normal to work and go to bed exhausted and get up and work more. The urgent wheel of capitalism spins on unconcerned with those existing in it. Capitalism commodifies whatever it can and doesn’t allow space for us to experience the full spectrum of being human.

Along with stealing your imagination and time, grind culture has stolen the ability for pleasure, hobbies, leisure, and experimentation. We are caught up in a never-ending cycle of going and doing.

We must uncover, simplify, and let go of our addiction to busyness.

As a child, many of us were punished for daydreaming while in classrooms. The teachers, trained under grind culture, assumed daydreaming was a student not paying attention. We slowly learn our time to imagine and download new information is wrong and not a part of learning. We begin the lifelong process of disconnecting from our bodies and learn to ignore the subtle and bold ways that our bodies and Spirits are communicating with us constantly.

The truth that we may be afraid or unsure of how and when we will rest is valid. We can move through our guilt, shame, and fear that will emerge from reclaiming our bodies and time as our own. This is a vulnerable truth that we should not run from or hide. It can be overwhelming to go against the dominant culture’s desires and plans. We have been taught to hustle, fake it till we make it, ignore our bodies’ cues for rest, all because our systems have been created to ignore and push the laborers and the workers as hard as possible to increase profit.

This is a time to simply stop and feel. A time to not force or attempt to make sense of what can and will happen when we allow our bodies to heal from the massive load we have been carrying consciously and unconsciously.

Can you remember a moment in your life when you have been told that the machine pace of your days is not normal?

“You are doing too much. You can rest. You can just be. You can be” is revolutionary.

When did your desire to daydream fade away? When did you begin to confuse the idea of daydreaming as frivolous and a waste of time?

Urgency is a myth that preys upon your fears about the future.

As we prepare ourselves to deal with the harshness of everyday living, rest becomes a space of physical and spiritual softness. An antidote to the hidden rage present in an exhausted body. Rest is a protest. Rest is a beautiful interruption in a world without a pause button.

share the deep guilt and shame that they feel about resting. “I feel like I should be doing something,” “I feel worthless when I am not checking off things on my to-do list,” “I feel lazy and unworthy if I have a day full of leisure.” Bound up in guilt and shame, unable to settle into the gift given to us when we can just be. This is where the dreaming begins. You are activating all the power that has been forgotten. You are making a new path.

I don’t want a seat at the table of the oppressor. I want a blanket and pillow down by the ocean. I want to rest. I dream of a well-rested world outside of the toxic systems in place now.

Rest!, I share the need for seeing rest as not an extra treat that we must run to but more of a lifelong, consistent, and meticulous love practice. We must snatch rest.

We must believe we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. It is one of our most ancient and primal needs.

Productivity should not look like exhaustion. The concept of laziness is a tool of the oppressor. A large part of your unraveling from capitalism will include becoming less attached to the idea of productivity and more committed to the idea of rest as a portal to just be. Your early understanding of “productivity” is most likely tainted by the toxic socialization we all received growing up. It must be examined.

The end is a well-rested future. Our resistance is the balm for a deeply traumatized world.

You are enough right now simply because you are alive! You are divine, no matter what capitalism or white supremacy has trained you to believe.

hear the narrative a lot that it’s time for institutions and governments to make it easy for us to rest and this is where the Rest Is Resistance framework differs. We are resting regardless of what any of these systems are doing. We are not waiting. We are not asking permission.

Take a deep breath and slowly imagine your life well-rested. Give yourself grace and mercy. It is yours to cocoon and swaddle yourself in. You can rest!

Capitalism wants my body to be a machine. I am not a machine.

I have the right to resist grind culture. I don’t have to earn rest. Do less, watch how I thrive.