To Rest Is to Resist: Reclaiming Stillness in a Culture That Fears It
To Rest Is to Resist: Reclaiming Stillness in a Culture That Fears It
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| *video available Here |
For many of us, especially Black folks, those words were passed down like sacred scripture. Spoken in love but forged in trauma, the phrase echoes our people’s long history of being forced to produce, hustle, and perform just to be seen as human.
But what if stillness isn't laziness?
What if rest—real, intentional, soul-deep rest—is resistance?
The Weekend That Asked for Nothing
Recently, I did something radical.
I laid down. Not from exhaustion. Not because I’d worked two jobs. Not because I earned it.
I just… wanted to.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t feel guilty about it.
No rushing to open a building. No helping someone move a couch. No calls, spreadsheets, or space-saving.
I just was. And that stillness? It felt ancestral.
In that silence, I realized how deeply we’ve been programmed to feel guilt in our pause.
This grind-obsessed system—rooted in capitalism, white supremacy, and survivalist habits—trains us to be machines.
But we are not machines. We are people. Living, breathing, divine.
And when I didn’t feel guilty for resting, I knew: We’ve been taught to fear our own stillness.
Rest Has Always Been Rebellion
Let’s call it what it is: a legacy of forced labor.
During enslavement, an idle Black body wasn’t just lazy. It was dangerous.
Rest meant you were plotting. Slow meant you were sabotaging.
So even after Emancipation, that mindset didn’t vanish—it morphed.
Post-slavery, we overworked to prove our worth. We outpaced others to deny their lies.
We didn’t just grind for survival—we ground ourselves into dust chasing dignity.
And now? That trauma is dressed up as #grindculture.
But here's the ancestral truth:
We were always worthy. We never had to earn it.
Slavery Didn’t End—It Evolved
The 13th Amendment left a trapdoor wide open:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime..."
And just like that, a new plantation was born—through Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and mass incarceration.
If you were Black and not working, you could be jailed.
And once jailed? You were leased back out to mines, railroads, or plantations—slavery 2.0.
That same mindset shows up today in:
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Stop-and-frisk
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Anti-loitering laws
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Anti-homeless ordinances
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“Failure to comply” charges for simply asking questions
The system never hated laziness. It feared stillness.
The Fifth Pillar We Forgot
At Gye-Nyame Journey, we teach the Four Pillars of Health:
Movement. Breath. Food. Water.
But after this revelation? I’m telling you—we need a fifth pillar: Rest.
Not crash-and-burn rest.
Not Netflix escape rest.
Not burnout-forgiveness rest.
I'm talking about sacred, intentional, unapologetic REST.
Because no matter how nourished your body is, it will crumble without pause.
Because rest isn't optional.
It’s resistance. It’s ritual. It’s repair.
The New Plantation Has Wi-Fi
Today’s hustle culture is just a remix of the old plantation logic.
Now we whip ourselves.
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“No days off.”
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“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
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“Grind now, shine later.”
Sound familiar?
We’ve been tricked into believing our worth is in our work.
But let me remind you:
The real devil’s workshop isn’t an idle mind.
It’s a society that convinces you you’re only valuable when producing.
That system will burn you out, praise your ashes, then hire your kids to sweep you up.
Resting is not quitting.
It’s refusing to be used.
A New Vision: Rest as Reclamation
What if we reframed rest as not weakness—but warriorship?
What if quiet moments became rituals of rebellion?
What if we taught our children that rest is not the reward—it’s the birthright?
To reclaim our time is to reclaim our body.
To be still is to stand tall.
To rest is to remember: We were not born to hustle. We were born to live.
🛑 Call to Inaction: The Wisdom of Stillness
“The tree bears more fruit after winter’s stillness.”
Let this be your season of winter. Of stillness. Of unlearning.
Stop trying to bloom without ever being bare.
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Where in your life are you rushing toward things that don’t nourish you?
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What guilt are you still carrying about being “unproductive”?
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Who profits from your exhaustion?
You don’t need to do more.
You need to subtract the noise.
Shed the shame.
Stop one thing that’s weakening you.
The Ancestors will meet you in that silence.
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