How to Rest

I’ve been thinking about what it means to rest. Dictionary.com defines the act of resting as “to refresh oneself”,  and I have been in need of a refresh because I have exhausted myself by worrying over little things. This week, I present to you a short list of my restful moments over the past week.

Walking

I find it hard to pull my mind to a halt, there’ll always be something tinkering around in my brain (I am astounded when my friends say they can think about nothing, mind completely empty). But one way that I like to put my mind to rest is by going on a long walk. The repetitive nature of one foot in front of the other creates this metronome-like beat that puts my mind in a trance.  Last week, I went on a mini-hike with my friend, Hetty, and it was lovely. It took an hour and half to get to the outskirts of London, then we were engulfed by the forest ferns for two hours. I enjoyed the quiet, away from double decker buses and Deliveroo bikes speeding down the road. We exchanged life updates on our way to finding a Lido (we had no idea what that was before we saw it) and watched the water of the lakes. See the mini-vlog below!

Put the telly on!

My legs were sore after that hike but I knew I could look forward to my morning routine: stretch, shower, get dressed, and watch telly with breakfast! I live with my good friend Richard, and he has been showing me a popular anime series, “Attack on Titan”, and now I have introduced him to “Heartstopper”, a British teen series. Each morning we’ll watch two episodes of both show before we go our separate ways for the rest of the day and it brings me so much joy (we have coined it “HeartAttack”, the new Barbenheimer double bill we needed) . It’s a ritual that has a childish charm to it! It feels like we are unsupervised children (aka adults) who have been told that they can do whatever they want and the best thing we can come up with is rebelling against our parents’ wishes by watching TV in the morning. But it’s also the fun of escapism. Jumping in to a story and becoming invested in the characters, whether they are soldiers fighting the supernatural to save humanity, or queer teens falling in love. Both Richard and I are film students and creators, so I enjoy sharing my mornings with someone who gets as excited as I do about a story. I definitely feel refreshed leaving our sessions, ready to craft stories of my own.

Shared alone time

One of my best friends has been travelling for the past month and she has finally arrived back to the UK so she came to visit me today! We caught up over homemade brunch (pancakes and an array of toppings) and laughed about our current life dilemmas. We showed each other our “for you” pages on TikTok (how Gen Z of us) and now she is taking a nap beside me as I type this. Though we are not speaking, we are still spending time together, I am so at peace in her presence. Each year that I get older, I think I am becoming more introverted because spaces of quiet with as few people as possible are becoming more important to me haha. 

In my thinking about defining rest, I have had to draw out the parts of me that sees rest solely as a reward for hard work, and replace them with the idea that rest is a way of living. I know that sounds very aloof and unrealistic but I hope you also see the truth in that. I am about to go swimming with Hetty now so I’ll see you in the next one!