Rest = Black Excellence
As I was interviewing a friend for my podcast, I asked him the question of how he got where he is. His response was “rest”. Then he went on to explain how rest is a part of what it means for him to be, and to be about, Black Excellence.
It’s very easy to center excellence in a place of action and activity. Much of the world we live in has to do with how we act, produce, create, and/or have an effect on the physical world. Yet, nothing can happen without time to recover. Recovering means to rest. We need time to dream the ideals that we will bring into existence. We need time to have connections and relationships that heal and sustain our efforts. Because those can’t have the same depth when we are in the middle of a grind. We need time to sit with the emotions and experiences we have been through, so that we can find the wisdom that these experiences were providing to us. After-action reports and debriefs exist to provide this retrospection. There is a time for being part of the crowd, and a time when we need the solitude of our thoughts, which we can find while we rest.
As my friend put it, our world is much more than the hustle and grind that is before us. In our world, as we grew up, and in the world of our ancestors before us, there was a place for rest. Our history has been made not just by blood, sweat, and tears, but also by connecting, perceiving, and dreaming though the practices, the art, and needs of the power of resting. May we continue Black Excellence by showing, experiencing, and embodying, for the days and descendants to come, by embracing our power in our ability to rest.