Learning to Rest

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."

No one comes to Paris to sleep.

And yet, for six weeks, that is more or less what I did. I arrived with grand ambitions of someone newly living in the City of Light: writing, creating, flaneuring through the streets at all hours. Instead, I nearly immediately contracted a proper flu, barely able to leave my 7-floor walk-up apartment for days — and then weeks — at a time. Three weeks in, an existential spiral joined me, and I was consumed with fears of having lost my energy, drive, and creativity forever. Is this who I have become? Someone lazy?

Rest, but make it fasion. Source

Thích Nhất Hạnh writes in “Rest in the River,” “the habit of struggle has become a powerful source of energy that is shaping our behavior, our actions and our reactions…our consciousness [and our body] knows how to heal itself if we know how to allow it to do so. But we don’t allow it. We worry so much about healing, which is why we do not get the healing we need.”

Fitful night after fitful night of interrupted sleep, I would wake each morning with the intention of working. I ripped yesterday’s page out of my journal to start again: “6 AM: Wake Up.” I needed to work on the next phase of my life, slashing both real and imagined tasks off of my to-do list. The morning alarm would ring I wouldn’t have the energy to get up, and by noon, I was defeated. I had lost the day to my lack of productivity.

Out of necessity and desperation, I resolved to redefine a good day as one where I took a nap and had a sauna. When my mental clarity returned, it brought with it an obvious ephiphany: I just needed to rest.

Learning to rest wasn’t just a temporary solution to illness but a fundamental skill I had neglected in my decade-long pursuit of constant productivity. I have invested my adult life in developing academic, creative, and professional skills, but very few related easeful and regular self-restoration. And I hit my limit. My body pulled the emergency brake, forcing me to pay attention, to unlearn pushing through exhaustion as a badge of honor.

Rest 101

Rest isn't merely the absence of activity or the cessation of work.

What defines rest isn't the activity itself but our relationship to it—approaching without agenda, expectation of output, or measurement of success. Rest is when we temporarily step outside the economy of productivity and allow ourselves to simply be.

Thích Nhất Hạnh illustrates this quality of presence beautifully in his teaching about lighting incense: "When I stick it into the incense burner, I put my left hand on my right hand. That is the tradition...The stick of incense is very light; one hand is enough to hold it. Why do you have to put your left hand on your right hand? Because it means that you are doing it with one hundred percent of your body and your mind."

This is precisely what differentiates true rest from "time off." Rest requires that same wholehearted attention—bringing one hundred percent of ourselves to the act of renewal, rather than constantly dividing our attention between resting and planning our next productive endeavor. When we rest with this complete presence, we honor the practice as worthy in itself.

In a culture that conflates worth with work, defining rest as essential rather than optional becomes a radical act of self-preservation—and, ultimately, the foundation upon which sustainable creativity and genuine presence are built.

I did very little of what one dreams of for two months in Paris, but I found the way back to myself. And for that, I'll take the city I needed over the one I dreamed of.

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References & Further Reading

• Subtitle Quote: Anne Lamott, from "Almost Everything: Notes on Hope" (2018)

• Buddhist teachings: Thich Nhat Hanh, "Rest in the River"

• Visual essay: Emily Lordi, "The Visual Power of Black Rest," The New Yorker