We sprung forward. This time change is throwing me for a loop. Nobody I talk to, and I mean, nobody, likes daylight savings time. The older I get the harder it is to adjust. Every year we see countless articles about legislature doing away with this outdated practice – but some negligible little fly gets into the ointment. Last year I read they woulda, but they ran out of time…hahahaaaaa. True story. The Michigan house passed the bill but the senate adjourned before they got to it…or the other way around…At this point I cannot believe this is by accident. C’mon now. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but am I the only one who suspects that government is just trying to keep us tired?!
How can rest become an intentional practice for resistance? In my personal existence I have used napping as a form of escape all my life. Chaos could be momentarily quelled if I physically removed myself from the fray and went to bed. Long ago I coined the phrase ‘napitate’ – I’d start out meditating and if it went well, I’d end up napping. And by “went well” I mean nobody interrupted me. Good luck with that, mother wife manager cook nurse woman…
All this week I am referring to Tricia Hersey’s groundbreaking work, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. We are not using time correctly in our culture. We are using it as part of an oppressive strategy to keep the population in poverty. Time and poverty go hand in hand. Lack is lack; you do the math.
I once quit a cushy job because I could no longer tolerate listening to the same, repetitive conversation day in and day out and day in and day out – wealthy, privileged clients and staff complaining ad nauseam about the lack of help. “Nobody wants to work anymore.” “The younger generation has no work ethic.” Under my breath I’d whisper, “I have a solution. I can solve this dilemma for you in two words: LIVING WAGE.”
Guess what?! The younger people are on to this game, this agenda of little money for lotsa time. Of going home at the end of a long shift on their feet to a household of hungry family, of being constantly in a state of exhaustion. Whatever your opinion is, this fact is true: THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. Now we are experiencing the pain of transformation, but transform we must. The minions are fucking tired.
“The more I sleep, the more I wake up,” Hersey says. And she’s right. How on earth can anyone dream when they’re sucked empty? Einstein is credited with saying, “Imagination is the language of the divine.” How do we support a culture of geniuses and imagine our way out of poverty if we can’t REST? How do we develop a vocabulary for this?
A Painterly Home 