In music there are notes to indicate when to play and when to rest. In texts there is punctuation to indicate when to read and when to stop. How to pace. There is space between the lines like a silent breath. In life there is between heart beats. There are stop lights. There is a rhythm to most things. But there is no one conducting our orchestra. There is no sheet music to say play, pace, and pause. There is only productivity and how to guides on why it is your fault you are not more productive and not more rested and 20 things you can do to change it.

Today, the global discussion about rest is largely in response to a productivity culture that claims our every waking moment. We know we are feeding a machine whose input is exploitation and output is distance: the wealth gap, the gender gap, the racial divides. We leap in and come out the other end farther from others and farther from our dreams. Not only does it devour our days, for some, it seeps into our sleep. The unfinished tasks of the day reappeared in dreams.

We learn so early to speed up instead of slow down. To do more to meet ever higher demands. I remember my colleagues who would be up at 4am to rouse the house and get every one off to an early start. Mothers who were the ticking clock of their house. They would drop the children off at school and be in at work by 6am to put in enough hours to leave early enough to pick their children in the rushing evening hours. Home in time to eat. Home in time to sleep and reset the clock.

An African woman at rest, does not tend to stay at rest. No one will let her (not even her self). She is an endless helping hand, forever stoking charcoal, weeding, washing dishes, looking after children. She is taught, at least in Uganda, that to be the proper woman she will be the first to rise and the last to sleep. She will close the kitchen and close the day with the sigh of the last embers in the stove. Tomorrow, she will rise with the sun and start again.

In the story of Njabala, Njabala’s only crime was to live the African dream. To grow up with parents that provided everything for her so that she didn’t have to work as they did. It was only once they had died and she had to marry that she had to clean and till and cook. When she couldn’t her husband beat her. As if to say, her soft hands had earned her violence. In Njabala’s world, the world of Ugandan girls, idleness is a vice and productivity a virtue. Produce work, produce results, produce children.

We fight for the privilege to rest, just as our parents did. We fight to have enough to earn time off, a vacation, retirement. We know that our time on earth is limited, 4000 weeks on average. We know our energy is limited and often compare ourselves to devices – battery low, please recharge. We are pummeled with messaging around life-work balance and somehow it has become our individual duty to dig ourselves out of this collective hole.