The Politics of Refusal
Sometimes When We Fail to Say No, Our Body Does It For Us
Yesterday I’d planned a productive day, to run errands for my octogenarian Mom, and to tick things off her list.
However I’d noticed a pain shooting down my leg while going on a familiar walk next to Lake Bemidji the day before. Ouch.
I did all the things I normally do when I typically feel pain. Flex, stretch, massage the area in question.
When I went to bed, I noticed a pain near the left piriformis, an area deep inside glute muscle. It was hard to adjust myself to a comfortable position to sleep. Then when I went to take my first step yesterday: OUCH! What the hell!
Some of us have a harder time with boundaries than others. I’m recognizing the places in which I’ve deeply absorbed the message that resting is lazy. However, laziness is a lie. If you don’t believe me, it’s time for you to read Dr. Devon Price on this matter.
The word lazy originated in 1540 from the German word lasich, meaning feeble or weak. The concept proved politically useful to early colonial settlers, who depended on slavery and indentured servitude to produce wealth. Enslavers kept people busy and exhausted out of fear that idle time would give them the means to revolt.
How convenient!
Our current economic system teaches us that there is ALWAYS more we could be doing. If we aren’t doing it, we must be lazy. However, when we look to nature, we often see that resting, playing, and just being are perfectly legitimate activities.
Tricia Hersey, in her important work Rest Is Resistance, articulates the value of the politics of refusal. It is deep and resonant work that requires community care, not self-care. The theft of the labor of her people, coupled her own exhaustion, has given birth to deeply creative practice.
However, outright refusal isn’t always possible for all bodies. Depending on our level of privilege and the layers of marginality in our groups and cultures, rest isn’t as accessible for all of us. This is where I love her exploration of “trickster” energy in We Will Rest: The Art of Escape.
Even though my left leg has a tingly throb of pain, some part of me laughs with recognition at the trickster in my own body. I’d been flirting with the idea of applying for weekly caregiving help for my Mom. I live a 4.5 hour drive away. Yet I’ve been making trips every 3 weeks for a year now, since Dad went into a nursing home. The mean inner critic in me said: “You’d better do that work yourself. Don’t be lazy.”
I’d even gotten coaching on this from a lovely friend of mine, who helped me with a Byron Katie turnaround on the belief: “I should be taking care of my parents.” We came up with three alternative beliefs: 1) I shouldn’t be taking care of my parents, 2) My parents should be taking care of me, and 3) I should be taking care of me.
The initial thought felt heavy and oppressive. The first alternative opened a creative part of me. What if I should be focusing on what I’m good at instead? What if there ARE other people who can also help?
The second one made me laugh out loud. My parents are 80, and 82, with many disabilities and frailties, and one lives in a nursing home. They aren’t able to take care of me.
The third one: Whoa! Yes. I should be taking care of me. That doesn’t preclude taking care of my parents, but if I don’t take care of myself, what then?
I thanked Alex for helping me to see new possibilities, and to feel lighter as a result. Then I resolved to prioritize an application to the caregiving organization that my sister had recommended to me five months earlier.
But I didn’t do it yesterday.
I’d started my usual round of sweeping, cleaning, and de-cluttering. Putting off asking for help. It’s a pattern I learned well, apparently. My Mexican Dad modeled this especially well. It was a deep source of shame whenever he saw a figurine depicting a stereotypical Mexican resting in the heat of the day under a sombrero (wisdom, not laziness).
My conditioning wasn’t allowing for me to rest physically, and recruit support. Instead, my body spoke for me.
Something in me suspects this piriformis syndrome or inflamed sciatic nerve timed itself perfectly. “Slow down, you’re moving too fast” (cue the Simon and Garfunkel song).
Trickster energy indeed. Glad to know my body is on board with the politics of refusal.
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How are you able to push back on the systems that insist on your overwork?
Do you have examples of the politics of refusal in your own life?
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