Rest can be difficult to prioritize when the knowledge of the stakes of inaction drive your efforts for justice. But in your efforts to transform the world don't forget that action and rest are in a dynamic cycle that together maximize your effectiveness. Here’s some lessons I’ve learned about rest that have helped me and others use rest as a way to increase access and effectiveness.
One evening as I prepared to board a bus New York City for yet another activist training my spiritual mentor, Kevin Greene, asked me: “Do you want to be a martyr?” The question stopped me in my tracks.
I had been going hard to organize, train, and doing all I could to support movements for change. I was taught to expect long hours in social justice work, but my mentor reminded me, “It is a choice to work the way you do.”
What is your pace for doing social justice work? When you get conscious about your pace, you can make clear choice to maximize your effectiveness and avoid traps that lead to burnout.
Martin Luther King Jr. worked round the clock for justice, but strained his family relationships by rarely prioritizing them. As an organizer, I’ve seen brilliant strategists whose faces are drained of color from exhaustion because the movement “needed them." Pushing ourselves so hard is a choice, but even if we do it for good reasons there is a cost.
In my trainings, I was taught to give people an environment that is similar to the pressures of daily life to help them fully practice the skills they want to learn. I loved this kind of training as it made me a stronger, more flexible trainer, but these long hours also led to me feeling so worn down after training that I needed to take a day or two to recover.
So for a weeklong training of activists, my co-trainer and I decided to do something radical, we ran an intensive workshop with only 8 hours of training a day. The result was shocking: people were grateful, left more rejuvenated, and still increased their well of skills and resources.
I remember when one Black trans organizer said, “Now I can invite my people to these workshops because the hours give us enough time to rest, heal, and show up ready for the next day.” When we integrate time to tend to other priorities into our workshop designs, we also make space for people who can’t be organizing 24/7 to join.
How are you making time for rest into these times of physical distancing alongside rapid response? Rest is a radical possibility that you are invited to embrace as part of the cycle of taking action.