Get Radical. Get Some Rest.

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This article is one of several on reclaiming rest in all aspects of our lives. For more, read Give Us a Break, Breaking It to Your Boss, Want to Get Away, Stay Home, Sleep Tips: Age Matters, and The No Wake Zone.

In Prozac Nation, a memoir that struck a chord with millions of readers, Elizabeth Wurtzel writes, “I don’t want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am 20 and I am already exhausted.” Despite the fact that we are surrounded by labor-saving devices, despite the elevation of convenience and comfort above almost all other values, a profound sense of tiredness seems to be one of the defining features of modern life. And our world is as exhausted as we are. Our ecosystems are stretched far beyond their limits, and social structures like families and communities battle for survival.

The natural response to tiredness is to rest. Modern consumer culture, however, doesn’t like rest; “time is money,” we are told. Every second saved by a dishwasher or a car must be paid back double in longer working hours. In the gym, exercise (which is freely available in the nearest park) is sold at exclusive rates so that we can do it while we’re watching television. Even rest itself is commercialized and repackaged as “leisure.”

Returning to truly replenishing forms of rest would demand a reevaluation of tiredness—all the different kinds, each of which leads to negative personal, social, and ecological consequences. In doing so, we would address the problem of unsustainability, which is, after all, the essence of tiredness.

When we are tired, we know we cannot carry on in the same way for long. In evaluating all the ways we’re tired, we confront what makes life unsustainable. For us, and for our world.

First, there’s sleepiness. When we do not sleep properly, our brains run on depleted energy; compassion, creativity, imagination, and reason are lost, and the reptilian fight-or-flight brain takes over. Some psychiatrists have suggested that depression is a symptom of sleep loss, rather than the other way around. A shortage of sleep is associated with obesity, road accidents, torture, and war.

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