“There’ll be time to rest when you’re dead.”
That particular quote has been attributed to a few people throughout history, including Catholic saints, Greek philosophers and Robert De Niro, but it always brushed me the wrong way.
The idea of rest being a reward, instead of a requirement, strikes me as one of the worst and poorly executed ideas to take root in human culture. And one doesn’t have to look too far to see some horrendous ideas we’ve been privy to throughout history.
Going right back to antiquity, the gift of the Genesis creation story is it showcases this omniscient, all-powerful Creator of the Universe who rests on the seventh day. This gave birth to the Sabbath, and ultimately the weekend, because if God needs to rest, then we sure as hell better do it as well.
Take a look at what all our advances in biology have shown:
Best thing you can do for your physical and mental health? Good night’s sleep.
Want to grow stronger? Rest your muscles for a day.
Need your brain to be more focused? Rest it for a while.
The closest activities we have to the benefits of rest are walking and proper nutrition.
Yet, we persist in this insane idea that rest should be something that happens later. We’ve been duped into the damaging ideology that we should be constantly moving, hustling, working until…
we die?
Consider how quickly people age when they retire from their workplaces and have nothing to keep them occupied. Having never learned to rest, or even pursue hobbies for pure leisure, they often find death knocking at their door pretty quickly. Understanding there are various other reasons this happens, the sudden lack of purpose in their lives is damaging.
My biggest angst is the influx of technology, all designed to help us do things faster and easier to “free up time.” Yet, instead of completing tasks in a fraction of the time and using the rest to enjoy life, we’ve accepted an accelerated work schedule that now requires us to create tools to free up time for the tools we’re already using that were meant to free up time in the first place! I mean, instead of implementing “AI Responses to emails to get through them quickly,” maybe we should ask why we’re even fielding so many emails in the first place.
Now, it is understandable why this idea percolated in our consciousness.
People who rest have time to think. They have to time to connect with each other. To re-align themselves. They have time to recognize their life isn’t meant to be indentured to others, that a bigger picture exists and life is more than being a busy bee (who, by the way, only live weeks to a few months).
The most dangerous idea that could come out of all of this is they could fall in line with the existentialists and create their own purpose in life, rather than accepting the one that’s been given to them.
All this would be horrible to those who have tried to control the narrative of our lives.
When it comes time to do the work, do it.
But when it comes time to rest, take it. Defend it. Protect it.
And don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for it.