Relaxing is Hard Work without Community
Taking it easy or relaxing can be healing at times. However, it is difficult to relax without community care as our lives call us to work and family responsibilities day in and day out.
What do you do to truly relax? As it turns out, this is a question that is difficult for many to answer. For those of us who do have a routine to foster relaxation, it is often something that seems more like a luxury than daily part of life and requires a financial investment that too many cannot afford. Even so, we struggle to not worry about all we have to do when we do take time away from all the responsibilities to just be human and relax. We know that experiencing these scared moments of relaxation regularly helps our mind, body, and spirit rejuvenate. In order for all of us to experience this feeling, we must intentionally care and make space and time for all to experience relaxation. This is possible when we lean into our collective liberation dreams. However, it is the very tasks of individual work and lives that make it hard for most of us to chill out more often. Let's unpack that and consider some alternatives to how we can do work and life together.
Work demands
Work is a natural human activity that has many purposes. Most who work do so to obtain income that can be used to supply needs for their families. Many also report that their work helps them feel a sense of purpose. Others even find social connections through work. There are ample reasons we work that make this activity one that positivity contributes to our lives.
However, there can be drawbacks to work as well, especially when the going gets tough. In our capitalist society, most people can identify with feeling the overwhelming pressure to produce, produce, produce at some point in their career. This goes beyond the healthy challenge of reaching goals at work to toxic expectations requiring the sacrifice of our wellbeing. We know toxic work situations and workplaces can create detrimental outcomes for employees. It is often those who are marginalized in the workplace who experience the worst outcomes in these situations. Burnout is one of the leading causes Black, Indigenous and people of color exit leadership positions in the nonprofit sector right now, for example.
Life demands too
Many of us have been told to pursue work-life balance. However, life can also come with its own set of challenges. It can be especially hard to think about relaxing these days, as we all have life responsibilities and uncertainties regardless of the season of life we are navigating. Young adults are figuring out how to become independent during a time of great transition in our society. Many of us who are approaching middle age are caregivers for our children and parents. More seasoned folks, unfortunately, are feeling some of the toughest healthcare and economic challenges of their lifetimes at a time that they expected to be retired and relaxing.
Let’s face it. Many facets of the once widely-accepted American dream have disintegrated into tales of horror for many in this nation. Locked out of opportunities to access what they need to achieve and thrive as homeowners in this nation, a growing number of BIPOC individuals and families are taking up residencies abroad to embrace a softer, more relaxed life at far less expensive costs. Those who have been in the workforce for decades are continuing to work well past 65 to maintain some level of financial security and access to decent healthcare during a time when the cost of living and healthcare have astronomically outpaced wages. Thus, dreams of building a nest egg, reaching retirement, and then relaxing are becoming more and more less common among younger generations.
Handling work-life demands, together
Given these challenges we all face, it makes sense to consider solutions to help us get through work and life demands together so that we can all relax more. When it comes to both work and life, we are all susceptible to burnout. Warning symptoms for burnout usually appear way before actual burnout is obvious, giving us some signs that we can heed so that we can intervene. Too often, however, we overlook or minimize these symptoms. When we do catch the warning signs, we sometimes fail to access community care.
Consider that stress is normal but should not greatly impact our daily functioning (eating, sleeping, socializing, etc.). If you set a plan to eat more meals you prepared at home but notice more and more that you are having fast food for lunch, this is a sign that something may be off. If you find that you are working longer hours, staying up later with work than usual, and increasingly passing up opportunities to connect with friends and family, take a moment to assess what is happening before that pattern becomes your norm. Food, sleep, and social connections are all forms of energy sources that we need to thrive. When we run low or lack quality in these areas, we run the risk of burning out.
When it comes to daily functioning and managing stress, community care is somewhat of a secret superpower for folks who lean into it. Community care is a practice and system of care that sees and leans into the power of our relationships to care and provide for each other in a shared ecosystem. Community care is often informal but powerful because human needs are always centered. Tapping into community care, however, is not something that happens overnight. It takes time and trust and genuine connection to others. When it is done well, however, relaxation can become a daily, affordable experience.
Mutual aid networks are a type of well-known community care system. For example, a group of parents for a local basketball team chipped in to provide gameday meals for the entire team so no child would miss a meal while playing sports. Parents who had the means and willingness donated funds and/or items. Some local businesses noticed the efforts and also chipped in with donations and other forms of support. As a result, all of the children and their families did not have to worry about making sure each child had a meal before the games.
As access to quality childcare is becoming more and more expensive and inaccessible across the nation, it makes sense for families with little ones to pool together to provide childcare. This is another example of community care and has already been a long-standing practice in some rural and small towns where childcare facilities are scarce and it is not uncommon for friends and families to share childcare duties including babysitting and transportation for no or low cost in exchange for goods and/or services.
About a decade ago, a rural community in Vermont decided to rotate hosting dinners in their homes. There was a local chef who could not afford the overhead of a restaurant but had a nice following in the community. Several diners who frequented the restaurant decided to organize themselves to pay the chef to prepare meals in their homes. The chef would rotate a menu and schedule among these families and prepare meals in their homes. The families would congregate at the host home for each meal, giving all some time to relax as the meals would be prepared. The chef got rid of the stress of managing the extreme overhead costs of the restaurant.
These limited examples are not shared as solutions to be copied and pasted but rather to illustrate how we can all relax a little more when we lean into caring for each other. Our communities are great ecosystems to start asking each other about our needs so that we can turn to each other when possible for care. People who are like-minded that know, like, and trust each other are most likely to lean into caring for each other to foster ease in each other’s lives.
How have you experienced community care? Did doing so help you relax more? Let’s talk about it in the comments.