#Radical Rest

Rest as a Radical Act of Resistance

That resistance targets a culture that normalizes overwork and glorifies burnout, where busyness becomes a badge and idleness a moral failure. In many workplaces, the “always available” expectation quietly expands until it fills evenings, weekends, and even sleep, turning life into a continuous performance of usefulness. As a result, rest becomes subversive precisely because it interrupts this momentum. Choosing to pause challenges the assumption that time must be monetized, optimized, or justified, and it exposes how quickly relentless pace can be mistaken for purpose. [...]

Rest as Resistance to Constant Productivity

Tricia Hersey’s claim starts by flipping a familiar moral script: instead of treating rest as a reward earned through labor, she presents it as a deliberate stance against systems that demand endless performance. In this view, sleep, stillness, and pause are not signs of laziness but acts of refusal—small, embodied decisions that say, “I am more than what I produce.” From there, the quote invites a broader question: who benefits when people feel guilty for stopping? By naming rest as “resistance,” Hersey links the private act of recovery to public power, suggesting that reclaiming one’s time and energy can quietly challenge social expectations. [...]