Every day lately we hear about energy. The energy industry’s role in climate change. The fuel (energy) it takes to ship goods around the world. The epidemic of fatigue (lack of energy) sweeping through demographics. Even new age mysticism is full of talk of energy from chi to cleansing the “energy” of a room. It seems that all the world’s problems can be distilled to problems of energy. Indeed, as a sustainability professional, I have read and worked on many Energy Master Plans and you would be astounded to see how many sectors of life these plans impact.
As you might expect, such plans often have a lot to say about solar power, building sub-metering, and insulation; however, another constant I have found in these plans is a section titled something like “changes in energy use behavior.” What does this mean? On the surface, this means turning the lights off when you leave a room or unplugging appliances when not in use. Yet, looking just a bit deeper, this simple statement can lead one down a surprisingly spiritual path. It did for me. How else do you think such a physics and biology nerd (like me) ended up in the world of Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism? Certainly the martial arts played a role as well, but when one begins to pull on the thread of what we call “energy” how you look at the world begins to shift – especially when you couple this new view with modern notions of rest and comfort; that is, how we recuperate energy.
Take a moment to consider the cost of how a modern American “rests”. Top of the list is Netflix or some form of streaming service, usually accompanied by some DoorDash delivered food. Then one might take a hot bath, or drive to a bar to visit friends. During the work day people take breaks with a cup of coffee, a hit from a vape pen, driving to a refreshing venue for lunch. We could go on about all the nice things we do to rest and on the surface, they are fairly innocuous. But look a bit deeper with energy in mind and the entire picture changes.
Going back to the source, every Netflix show has a massive carbon footprint: driving/flying the actors to and from the set, the food for all the film crew, the plastics, glass and precious metals for the cameras, the timber and plastic for the sets, the millions of kilowatt hours to run lighting, edit footage and then store the final product. So, while your few hours of screen time might only represent a few dollars on your electricity bill, those hours of watching are tied to one of the most energy expensive industries on the planet.
How about the other ways we “rest”? Hot water in the tub has to be cleaned, pumped, heated, and drained away to be cleaned again. Vape pens require costly refining of aluminum and water intensive harvesting of tobacco crops. Coffee has to be grown and shipped all over the world, not to mention the fact that the cups cannot be recycled. Every example of “rest” above requires some form of consumption and it takes energy to produce and deliver those things we consume. But, weren’t we supposed to be talking about rest, not consumption?
This is exactly the point. Press any person you meet on how they like to “kick back” and they will inevitably give you a list of consumables or actions – all requiring energy. Yet, in the same breath they will tell you about how tired and burnt out they are. This bothered me personally so much I began asking people if they knew how to rest with nothing. “Wait, you mean just sit and do nothing?” they ask, “Oh, I can’t do that I would go crazy.”
Hearing this over and over I realized that, somehow, our natural ability to rest had been stolen from us. So I started asking people about sleep. “It’s free!” I would say. “You don’t spend any electricity, pay for any product, and it will help your fatigue!” This turned out to be naiveté and I found people could not even sleep without a consumable: melatonin, pot, alcohol, a fan, a special pillow.
To recap, above is an illustration of a people who use energy every single moment, even when resting and sleeping. No wonder the world is consuming energy at a staggering pace. No wonder people are so exhausted. The entirety of life has become a form of “doing” and that is driving every human being nuts. What’s worse, the urgency of “saving the planet” has resulted in a deep guilt about “not doing enough”. We hold marches, and protests, and global climate conferences. But even these contribute to the problem! Imagine just for a second the amount of petroleum burned by a million person march. That’s a million planes, trains, and automobiles. Even in our actions to save the planet, we burn more. So here we are. Stuck in a place where we desperately need rest, but even in our rest, consumption has creeped in. It’s enough to make you cry. A lot.
But what about taking a walk outside? We can fight all day about how conventional agriculture is polluting the planet and retort back that organic agriculture is deforesting the world and neither of us will be fully correct. But what about ditching the Netflix and taking a walk outside? There is no petroleum involved. No crop in need of water and fertilizer. No shrink-wrapped package to open. The only cost is the calories you burn to take those 500 steps. How about just sitting somewhere and reading a second hand book? If you have trouble sleeping, maybe pick a real boring book on a deep couch.
In beginning to think this way about rest, I hope it is clear that when a person begins to rest without consumption, it is not only combating burnout, but also climate change. This is why I call this perspective “radical rest”. With this frame, one can not only carve out time to recover, but also feel empowered that the planet is benefiting from their non- action. Disengaging from the doom scrolling in favor of watching the clouds go by is not apathy. It’s informed, recuperating, (non)activism.
If I’ve made a light go off in your head about non-consumptive rest, you can stop reading now, turn off your device and go stare at a tree. However, if this is old news to you or you want to dig a bit deeper with me, now we turn to the biggest energy game changer of all: meditation.
I save this for the second half of the paper because, in my talking with people, I find that many people find the practice to be unapproachable – especially for long intervals. Understandable in a world where spending 20 minutes looking at the clouds doesn’t even come to mind when thinking about rest. I could address this “doing” misconception in meditation, but that is for another blog. Instead, I hope to transmit one of the “sky pearls” I have been given by my practice in the hope that it might give people a kind of shortcut. A kind of koan, if you will, to spark a new space in your awareness.
In 2019, I returned from China to my sustainability job. I hadn’t swapped by Mazda for a Tesla. I hadn’t signed some new power purchase agreement with a solar company to power my home. But my energy use had changed. When needing a break at work, instead of swapping my Outlook tab for a Facebook tab, I simply got up and walked around the building for five or ten minutes. I could be pretentious and call it walking meditation like I had learned at the monastery, but that wasn’t even important. It was the walking and disengaging that was important. Sitting back at my desk, I could be more settled. My mind full of imagery of the trees, not whatever catastrophe my environmental pages were posting to social media. I was still doing conservation work, in fact, more of it, but I use less energy within (fear) and without (electricity).
This continued at home. I took up the simple habit of meditating for twenty minutes every day after work instead of jumping right into my videogames. Like outlined above, this alone shaved a few dollars off my electricity bill, but as with all things meditation, the real benefits were off the cushion. I started connecting with people better. This meant that when my wife got home, we would spend a few hours just talking to each other instead of watching shows or driving to a movie. I began to process how many of my behaviors were simply chasing comfort. When meditation began to offer me unconditional comfort, anywhere, anytime, my appetite for many things simply vanished. It wasn’t that I was becoming some numb husk, quite the contrary. I simply felt so full inside that many things in my life were shown to be innocent addictions – all of which came with a cost or consumption. The sense of independence from these comfort addictions that mediation offered allowed me to downsize my life drastically; giving me more resources to help others and giving me wildly more energy to do what I saw as right in the world. This in turn led to the realization that the more burnt-out people are, the more they consume, epitomized in the all American phrase: “What a day, I need a drink to take the edge off”. Today that has evolved to “What I day, I need a drink, someone to deliver my food, 3 hours of bingeable content, and a house at exactly 72 degrees.” Translated, this person needs: a tequila plantation and refinery, gallons and gallons of gas to deliver both the drink and the delivered food, an entire industry of single use entertainment, an entire HVAC system, and all the electricity to run it all, just to “take the edge off”.
In no way do I want to generate shame for what we need to feel rested. Shame just leads to more burnout. We all absolutely deserve what creature comforts we find; I certainly still play videogames. Instead, I only wish to shift people’s perspective to how their ideas of “comfort” are mostly temporary relief from addictions we don’t truly need. This eclipsing of true comfort by addiction relief is hurting our mental health, pocketbooks, and the fight for planetary sustainability. We all need to stare our “innocent addictions” in the face and ask: what actually brings me lasting comfort? What truly generates new energy in my life? For me this was meditation. For others it might be jogging, yoga, sleeping, or great conversation. What is important is that we find at least one single thing with which we can rest that requires no product or energy. Finding it might set of a chain reaction in your life like it did for me. Sure, it won’t get plastic out of the ocean, or make factories cleaner, but it will reduce demand for these industries in the first place. Furthermore, a better rested person is better prepared to tackle complex problems like sustainability.
So, the next time you are burnt out, or want to do something radical to change the world. Take a nap. Daydream. Visit the local park’s ducks. Then maybe, if you’re feeling particularly revolutionary, go sit on a cushion and breathe for as long as you can.