Originally posted to Facebook on New Year’s Day 2023.
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We’ve spent the past few days playing board games, cleaning the house, and taking time to rest and recharge for all the sustainable shenanigans that 2023 may have in store for us.
We don’t really make resolutions, but if 2022 taught us anything to take into the new year with us it’s this:
Rest is sustainable.
Our grownup crew learned in different ways last year how to prioritize rest for our minds and bodies. In a world with so many enormous issues to tackle, it can feel like we need to be in a constant state of motion.
In the moment, as our mental freight trains pick up speed, this lifestyle seems logical. Only when it all crashes and begins undoing the progress made during our frenetic seasons of motion does it become clear that the cycle of go-go-go-STOP cannot go on forever.
That lifestyle is the literal definition of unsustainable: Not able to be maintained at the current rate or level.
If this cycle sounds familiar to you, I encourage you to think about how you can prioritize rest as we start this new year. Instead of making a resolution that starts strong and fizzles out as you get tired, ask yourself how you can bring rest into your lifestyle in a way that truly recharges you.
We cannot effectively advocate against the exploitation of tired people and a tired planet if we ourselves are too exhausted to get out of our own individual cycles of action and inaction.
Committing instead to allowing our communities to care for us and keep the momentum going while we rest is a radical resolution that runs counter to traditional New Year’s resolutions. In turn, in our friends and loved ones’ times of rest, we will be recharged and ready to maintain sustainable forward motion.
No more around and around we go. Only forward.