Sustainably Living the Activist Life: Rest (pt. 2 of 12)
As we ramp up into the holiday season and wind down the year there is a lot pulling at us. At the end of a long and tumultuous year what we all use is rest. All too often we don’t think of rest as part of our practice of activism but I believe we should. Without rest we can’t function properly. This is as true in our activist work as in any other area of our lives.
But what does meaningful rest look like? I think there are multiple elements to meaningful rest. There is the rest of our bodies, of course, but there is also the rest of our minds and our spirits. I’m pretty sure that you’ve had days when your soul is just exhausted. Crushed beneath the weight of the injustice in the world.
In this season that is meant to be about celebrating and giving thanks for the blessings in our lives we can easily get off track. Pulled by the pressure to consume and to outdo the Joneses we can find ourselves more depleted by the end of December than we were at the beginning.
This year my challenge to all of us is to do things very differently. To create some new, non-consumer driven traditions, and to think about the role of rest in our lives and our activist work. To make a plan for incorporating rest into our regular schedule so that we have what it takes to keep showing up.
Let’s look at each of our pillars in the context of rest.
Let's start with Commitment:
December is the perfect time to put pressure on the powers that be by opting out of our consumer driven holiday culture.
Here’s a little story for you, many years ago I had a friend whose father was a famous entertainer. The family was quite wealthy and could easily afford lavish holiday gift giving and celebrations. But there was a rule, no purchased Christmas gifts. Gifts were exchanged, but they had to be made. The kids and the parents made gifts for one another. That had a couple of impacts including that there weren’t a ton of gifts under the tree. When you’re making things by hand there’s a natural limit to what is possible.
When my friend told me about this I remember being so surprised. At first it felt like they were somehow losing out on Christmas but then, as I thought about it, I realized how beautiful that tradition was. I thought about how much more likely they were to remember the gifts they’d been given. How they would certainly remember the gifts they made. And I saw how beautiful that truly was.
This season we are being asked to restrict our consuming (specifically boycotting Target, Amazon, and Home Depot) as part of a larger plan to save our democracy from those who are selling us out to put more money in their already bulging pockets.
Let's face it, we have been trained to consume. I recall George W. Bush telling us, in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, to go shopping. Shopping. As if that was somehow going to ease the pain of the hole in the sky outside my window where the Twin Towers had been.
Resistance history is replete with stories of people withholding their financial participation in a corrupt system and forcing change. From the Salt March in India in 1930, the Anti-apartheid Movement boycotting Shell Oil, to the Montgomery Bus Boycott from Dec. 5, 1955 - Dec. 20, 1956, economic mass actions have changed oppressive systems for the better.
As we gear up to what I believe will be a mass economic blackout of large businesses in the U.S. (likely sometime next year) we can practice by restricting our spending at the time of year when these businesses make the bulk of their money. We can make, swap, and buy local. We can gift experiences rather than things. We can use cash rather than credit to keep more dollars in our local businesses and out of the hands of big banks.
I am going to shop for gifts, but I’m going to do my best to avoid feeding the machine. I’m going to check out thrift stores. I’m going to shop locally and pay with cash. I love my town’s winter market where local artists sell their creations. I’m going to see what I’ve got that can be gifted (if I’m not using it and it will bring someone else joy, that works for me). And, I’m going to shop keeping this handy rhyme in mind. “Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read.” I don’t do all four for anyone, and two gifts is my max for children. We don’t need to teach them to be mindless consumers. Everyone gets a book, socks are also a go to for me. Cozy socks and a book = bliss.
We can rethink how we do things, despite the ways in which we’ve been trained to feed the machine.
How does all of this relate to rest? So much of the stress in our lives is economic. There is so much pressure to be seen in a certain way, with certain things that confer status. Opting out of that paradigm is deeply restful. Not incurring unnecessary debt is restful. Not having a home full of stuff we wanted for a minute and then forgot about is restful. Keeping more of our money and being more intentional in our spending is restful. Basically, getting off the hamster wheel of automatic consumption is restful.
And, in a time when so many Americans are facing extreme financial stress due to job cuts, the high cost of living, and exploding health care costs, spending less, and mindfully, creates more peace of mind. And peace of mind is a deeply restful state.
Next up, ritual.
Here in the northern hemisphere it is winter, and I love winter. I love the quiet that comes with snowfalls, I love the coziness of thick socks and sweaters. I love the time to be more inwardly directed as the days are short and cold. I appreciate that in the slowing down I have more space to think, to plan, to reflect without the impulse to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather.
Winter invites us to create rituals that are restorative by their very nature. The soothing cup of hot chocolate, the jigsaw puzzle, the book that’s been sitting on your coffee table waiting for you to pick it up, the craft projects that got little attention over the busy warm weather months.
Setting up these rituals to transition us out of urgency and into restoration now, in the quieter time, means that when the busier seasons again arrive we will already have practices of restoration in place.
Maybe it’s a long, hot bath. Perhaps you set up a regular call with a friend who lives far away. I have a monthly call with a dear friend and it always gives me the experience of resetting. I often find that, in explaining what is going on in my life to her, that I gain increased clarity about things that have been swirling in my brain. You may find that a regular meditation practice is what you need. Maybe solitary walks in nature without listening to anything but the sounds around you.
Whatever means you choose, the point is to move into a steadier, more tranquil internal experience.
Lastly, creativity.
Being creative uses a different part of our brain than when we’re just being analytical. Being creative releases endorphins. Being creative brings us joy. What can you make in this season that’s become so caught up in excess? Doesn’t have to be something big, one Christmas I burned a CD for my dad of different covers of one of his favorite songs. He loved that gift, and I loved making it for him.
When I’m using my creative muscles, no matter how tired I am at the end, there is an experience of being restored in a deep way.
Turning to creativity in a season that has become so stressful for so many of us is a reclaiming of our spirit, a reclaiming of the true meaning of the season, and a rebuke to the culture of consumerism.
This year let’s opt out of pouring our money into coffers of those who have demonstrated time and again that their profit, not our well-being, is their highest concern. Let’s exercise our imaginations and creativity to craft a season that isn’t about how much money we spend but how much joy and connection we can create.
Measured spending, experiences over things. Creativity and play over consuming.
We can create beautiful, joyful, restful holidays without the pressure and expense that has become so normalized. We can set ourselves up to enter the New Year refreshed not exhausted. We can use this season to begin to create the habits of rest that will help us sustain our activist work over the long haul.
We are deserving of beautiful lives, and the beauty of those lives is to be found in the experiences we have far more than the things we have. So let’s reset. Let’s dial down the consumption and ramp up the connections, to our family and friends, to our communities, to ourselves.
Happy holidays!
Sustainably Living the Activist Life
This is the first post of 12 dedicated to a year in the activist life. Each month will explore a different theme and include thoughts and suggestions for incorporating Commitment, Ritual, and Creativity into your activism as a way of making this work sustainable over a lifetime, not just a moment.
In conversations with a number of people in the work of activism I’ve heard something that has been concerning. People are reporting that engagement with the day to day work of change making has been falling off. Fewer people taking regular action even as things spiral further into fascism. Honestly, I’m not entirely surprised. These past 9 months have been a lot. And, for a lot of people, it’s felt overwhelming. Believe me, I get it.
I also know that these are people who would be horrified to wake one day and realize that their lack of action contributed to things being even worse than they are with even more irreparable damage having been done.
So, I started thinking about what I could do to address this and what I’ve decided is that over the next 12 months (starting this November) I’m going to cover the elements I have found to be essential in sustainably living the activist life.
It’s not like breathing, we weren’t born knowing how to do this. While some of us were taught early at our parent’s knee, others of us came to the work later, when we woke up to the injustice and harms of our systems. Whenever you entered the work, what matters is that you are here now — when we desperately need the contributions of all people of conscience.
As we push back against rising fascism there is intense pressure to respond to the threats and the assaults. And this is when we need to remember that this isn’t a moment, it’s a movement. A movement towards true democracy, true justice. That means that we have to sustain what we’re doing over the long haul.
Movements require care and attention, they need a culture that lets them grow and adapt, but first they need to know what their aim is, individually and collectively.
The purpose of this series is to give you strategies throughout the next 12 months that will help you stay grounded, bring others into the work, and keep showing up. Commitment, Ritual, and Creativity, are the tools we’ll be using.
If you’re new to the work, my intention is to give you an onramp that makes it easy for you to add your contribution. If you’ve been in the work for a while I hope that you’ll use these thoughts as a way of fine tuning what you’re doing and how you’re doing it so as to avoid burnout.
My plan is to guide you, one piece at a time, to help you to, if you’re starting from scratch, design a rhythm, or, if you’ve been in the work for a while, tweak what you’re doing, so that you can show up sustainably — not constantly.
I’m going to be working within the context of three pillars, Commitment, Ritual, and Creativity. Let me start by defining what these pillars mean to me in the context of activism.
Commitment is what keeps movements going. Not constant urgency about everything, but clarity about what you are willing and able to do and showing up with consistency to do that thing, whatever it may be. You consistently show up to do the email notifying people about what’s going on every week, and you build trust which builds power and momentum. The same is true for whatever role you choose to take on. Demonstrate commitment and watch what a difference that makes.
Movements are sustained not by constant urgency, but by clarity, care, ritual, and creativity. Commitment means finding your lane and staying in it, trusting that when others do the same, with millions of people in the work, we’ve got it all covered. Commitment builds trust, power, and momentum.
Ritual is about having an anchor. Rituals ground us. They create structures that help us stay resilient, give us time for reflection, correction, and adaptation. They are touchstones we can regularly return to in order to not be blown off course by the chaos, of the moment.
For some it’s their faith or spiritual practice, for others it’s a practice like daily journalling, dedicated time in nature, or time disconnected from devices and spent in the analog world. It could be a regular coffee date with a friend or going to a movie, listening to live music, playing music. What it is, is completely up to you. The point is to create a practice that reconnects you to your deeper self. A practice that gives you respite from the stresses of the world so that you can return to the work restored.
Creativity is about joy! It helps us stay connected to the world we are working to build. Creativity pushes back against narrowing of our options that dictators seek to impose on us. Your creative practice isn’t about how good you are at it, it’s about how much pleasure it brings you. Sure, your art can be used in the movement, but the main purpose is so we don’t forget what we’re fighting for. So crochet, knit, paint, needlepoint, draw, dance, sing, write a poem, a story, or a protest song. Cook, make pottery, write a limerick, arrange flowers, hook a rug, make a joyful noise, make a zine. Maybe you create a space for others to be creative in.
Whether as a solitary pursuit or a communal one, the idea is to bring something that gives you joy into the world with no regard for how “perfect” it may or may not be. I, for example, can’t draw well, but collage? Man, I’m a wizard with a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, and a glue stick.
Our inaugural theme for sustaining the activist life is Clarifying Your Role and Finding Your Rhythm.
Commitment is about getting clear about your values, the cause you want to support. and your role in the work.
In my book, Micro Activism, I talk about the Activist Archetypes. The Headliner, the Producer, the Organizer, and the Indispensable. You can find the archetype quiz here and find your archetype. Once you do that identifying your role in the work becomes much more straightforward.
When your capacity and your actions match, sustaining your activism becomes much easier. Trying to force yourself into a role that simply isn’t you is a sure way to burn out and drop out. Recognizing that we need the contributions of all types of people to successfully change our systems means that you can show up exactly as who you are.
Commitment Action prompts:
Make a list of your skills, capacities, available time and energy.
Ask: Where do I want to put my energy? Protecting democracy, environmental issues, women’s reproductive rights? You can’t do it all, pick one and focus. You can always move on to something else later but try to commit for at least a year to give yourself time to gain traction.
Ask: What does the movement I’m working with need that I can provide based on the above?
Name your role. The role you can fill right now. Our roles change over time and that is as it should be, so don’t worry about a year from now. Just identify where you are today and what contribution you can make.
Ritual Action Prompts:
Personal: What personal ritual can you adopt as a regular practice?
Collective: Each week, make it a practice to check in with yourself, ask:
What did I say yes to?
What felt energizing? What felt draining?
Based on this: What do I want to do more of? What do I want to say no to this week?
Creativity Action Prompts:
Make a list of creative practices you would enjoy including in your life.
Pick one and play.
Remember it’s about joy, not proficiency. If you get better at what you do, that’s a bonus, it’s not the goal. The goal is to reconnect with that part of us that is willing to dive in for the sheer pleasure of the moment and the creative endeavor at hand.
That's it! I hope that this feels as exciting and nourishing for you as it does for me. Next month's theme is Rest. Look for that email in your inbox the last week of November. Until then, reach out with questions or feedback. And please, do share this widely. We need as many people in this work as we can get!