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Nature, including our own bodies, has cycles. And though they are constant, we rarely pause to notice them.1 Today, for example, marks the solstice: the shortest, darkest day in what has sometimes felt like a long, dark year.
I actually find a joyful anticipation leading up to the winter solstice. The whole world is about to lighten up as we move into 2024.
And even then, instead of feeling pause, this time is marked by the rush of the season, of plans, and projects and trips and consuming. It’s color and pattern and buzz and noise.
Even though the earth is cycling, and seasons cycle, and our bodies and the moon move in cycles, and ALL of those cycles involve some form of rest….we don’t. We follow external cues, calendar dates, seasonal plans-without it.
There is little collective rest. And we need it.
The Big Idea
Today, the majority of the planet’s inhabitants live in urban areas and many people have access to constant commerce. Nearly anything one could want is available delivered to their door in a matter of days. Grocery stores are stocked with every fruit or vegetable during all seasons of the year.
And while convenient, a downside is that many people miss out on a relationship with the Earth’s natural cycles. Cycles of slowing down, awaiting rebirth, and emerging are lost in our consumerism.
I learned from
that when snakes periodically shed their skin, which is once every month or two, in cycles, there is a point in the process in which they cannot see. During this time, they pause, their eyes turn a cloudy shade of blue, and they are temporarily blinded. Their sole focus is in this change they are experiencing. In this transition, they go inside themselves and come out anew.How might we learn from the snakes?
Making Big Ideas Usable
We need to go dark for a bit.
Let the Winter Solstice inspire.
Friends and colleagues at Teach for America’s Reinvention Lab, ran an experiment starting a few years ago as an organization. They called for collective rest for their team at the start of September in 2021. The idea was that if they could take time to tend to the non-work parts of themselves, something important would happen. Here is a podcast where they reflect on this choice. It is now an evolving practice.
The rest was for no specific reason, almost resisting definition. It was a pause to see what could emerge.
And as adrienne maree brown reminds us, “small provocations can reverberate on the largest scale.”
So here, as we end this year, another cycle full of A LOT, their work is reverberating. In effort to shed, to pause and to rest, here are some lessons learned by the Reinvention Lab that go beyond the 2021 experiment.
1. Rest is not given so we can increase our impact or productivity.
We all might hope to create and increase positive impact in the world when we work. However, we do not deserve collective rest because we work so hard and need to rest to work even harder. We deserve collective rest because it can help our exhausted and fragmented collective to be made more whole, human, and alive. Some insights on this in a previous School of Thought post here.
2. We need to do away with societal (or our own) expectations of what “rest” looks like.
Bubble baths. Candles. Sage. Meditation. Massage. There are stereotypical ways in which the word “wellness” has been messaged and commercialized in our society. This is not all there is to rest. Rest is carving out and sinking into our own spaciousness, whatever that looks like. Take a look at Jenny Odell’s work here.
3. Collective rest deserves space as a heartbeat practice, not a one-time thing.
Our own wholeness, our own aliveness—is reason enough to prioritize making space to pause, and pause together. If you might like to dig into resources to begin a rest practice, I highly recommend these from Art Amplifier.
So I go back to thinking about the snakes, and how they temporarily blind themselves to renew. This process, of momentarily pausing life to go inside and then reemerging refreshed, would be healthy for us all.
This is my solstice wish. Maybe this is what the end of the year, or the end of any cycle, is all about.
With these insights and questions to dream into, School of Thought invites you to prioritize a pause for our collective wholeness- in your schools, in your work and in your life. Lean into the audacious belief that taking collective rest is necessary for collective wellness.
What does rest look like for you?
Critical Connections Over Critical Mass
Connecting and Improving Youth’s Post Secondary Journey; with Teach For America’s Reinvention Lab January 18th 4pm EST
Join to be inspired by this research and the visuals that accompany it. To the researchers, “Success means connecting and improving youth’s or post-secondary journey.” Colleen Keating-Crawford and Elizabeth Booze conducted an ethnographic study in 2023, which resulted in beautiful stories, graphics and a sense of the post high school journey in the US today. They will share findings in this interactive (it will be super fun) presentation.
Creating Cultures of Questioning, with Cortico. Featuring Alex Kelly Berman and Hana Carey, March 19th in Philadelphia. DM for details.
In this session, Hana Carey and Alex Kelly Berman from Cortico, a non-profit partnered with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication, will share strategies for engaging in constructive conversations with those who hold different worldviews. They will share ways to listen, learn and lead in seeing issues from varying, even contradictory perspectives.
To join for these gatherings, become a paid subscriber!
If you are in Philadelphia and you’d like to learn more about our in person event on March 19th, please reach out.
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In humans, it takes about 28 days for our skin to replace itself. The Moon's phases repeat every 29.5 days. The average menstrual cycle for a woman is 28 days. 28 days
A lovely piece. Rest is so important and think if we are lucky enough to have periods given to us we don’t have to plan how we use it in to finer detail. We don’t always have to be ‘doing’. Certainly what I discovered writing about this last week ☺️