If anyone had asked me years back what rest is, I would have said sleeping on a tile floor while my little daughter, Divine is sleeping on my body.
And then when I grew much younger I knew that I was so wrong about my understanding of the word rest.
I used to think rest is when you lie down and close eyes. But I discovered you can sleep for some hours and still wake up tired because your body rested, but your mind, your spirit, your soul did not rest.
Now I understand that true rest for me is not just sleeping but switching off completely.
Now let me explain more. True rest looks like my rural village visits. No phone signal. No boss I have sent the draft. No checking hive upvotes every now and then. No noise of Enugu and Abakaliki cities. No generator sound in my neighborhood.
Just me, sitting on a low stool under the tree in my compound, with a plate of boiled groundnut and palm kernel, watching goats fight.
Sometimes true rest looks like driving to nowhere. Since I started learning how to drive, I discovered that early Sunday morning drive 6am, when the road is empty, no okada, just me, low music, window down is therapy. I am not going anywhere. I am just driving. No destination.
Sometimes true rest looks like doing nothing intentionally. Not scrolling. Not writing. Just sitting on my balcony after rain, smelling the wet sand, watching kids play football in the street. My phone is inside, on silent. I am outside, on silent too.
True rest for me is when my brain stops calculating money, maturity, car lessons, next post, data safety, cancel culture and just breathes.
Listen and let me tell you how i used to feel guilty about true rest then.
This is the part I want to be very real. I used to feel guilty to rest because in my country, Nigeria, if you rest, you are lazy. The president will call you a lazy youth. They entire race make it feel that if you sleep in the afternoon, your village people are winning. If you are not hustling every minute, you will not make it.
If you follow me you would have read one of my posts on the topic, Reasons To Have Enough Money. That mindset made me think I must always be doing something that brings money. If I rest, money will not come. So I would be on my phone all the time writing, commenting, reading, posting and immediately I drop my phone, I will rush to handle other businesses.
In the end, I will burnt out. Just like many hive users would write 5 posts in a week and then disappear for weeks because they are mentally down in which I am aware of it.
Guilt was confusing me, instead of allowing facts to correct me. The fact is I cannot pour from an empty cup.
This is how I now give myself more rest without feeling guilty.
I changed my rules. Here is what works for me.
I schedule my rest as I schedule my hustle. Like today which is sunday afternoon from 2pm to 5pm is my no phone rest. I write it in my book. It is not laziness, it is an appointment with myself. If someone calls, I call back after 5pm. And I don't explain too much.
sometimes I called it recharge instead of rest. This trick helped my brain. My brain sees rest as wasting time. But when I say l am recharging so I can write better, drive better, think better, my brain agrees. It is the same thing, but different language. And it works wonderfully.
sometimes I go back to communal rest. In my village, rest is communal. Men sit together in the evening, drink palm wine, gist. Women sit and plait hair. Nobody rests alone. So I started doing that too in the city. Instead of staying alone in my room scrolling, I call one or two friends, we buy suya and just talk under the moon. No agenda. That is rest that also cures loneliness.
I remind myself that hive and others were still be here. This is for my fellow ecency writers. Yes hive is a blockchain. Your post today will still be here tomorrow. You don't have to post every day to stay relevant. I now post 3 times a week, well-rested, instead of many times tired.
So what does true rest look like for me?
It looks like permission. Permission to stop. Permission to breathe. Permission to not be productive for a few hours.
Rest is not a reward after work is finished because work is never finished. Rest is part of the work.
If you are reading this and you feel guilty for resting today, hear me, you are not lazy. You are a human. Allow yourself to rest. The world will not end.
