Why can't we rest?

Our family spent the holidays sick, once again, as it seems we have been doing for months now. Being sick only grants us one silver lining - the ability to rest. As I kicked back ready to enjoy the only positive of my condition, the phone rings. The phones rings on Christmas Eve. I answer, and speak to someone asking about providing non-urgent medical resources for my child - a call that could have waited days. On New Year’s Eve, I get another call as I’m attempting to rest before catching up on housework. Again, another call that could’ve waited; that should have waited.

Looking back on my adult life, I’ve not really had a day to rest in almost 15 years. People speak of these days where they lay on the couch and binge watch hours and hours of uninterrupted TV with bowls of snacks and sodas. Since its inception, making a day of streaming like that has been such a foreign concept, a fairytale on the breath of a technology-obsessed society.

Fifteen years of working, creating, doing. Getting a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, bearing and raising two children, working part-time off and on, all through multiple newly diagnosed disabilities and processing decades of complex trauma. Fifteen years of going and going, and I am so beyond exhaustion.

Must we live our lives this way? Making phone calls on holidays? Treating spiritual sabbaths as nothing more than days that stores close early? Perpetuating the agenda of capitalism through conformity, spending precious time buying gifts, wrapping paper, center pieces, and catered dinners, just to show off our little precious wealth? It is the fool who trades time for money. We are all little obedient fools.

Why can’t we rest? Why can’t we build in time and spaces for rest in our communities? Sometimes all we need is a day or a week or even a month to reset. To enjoy our humanity. If we aren’t able to enjoy it, why do we exist? Why can’t we rest?