How to do nothing

Helping Friendly Newsletter, 07.16.21

Jenny Phillips

Jul 16, 2021

GM! ☕️
Here’s what you’ll find in today’s email:

How to do nothing
Lying flat
Sometimes we DO
Vacation stack

1. How to do nothing

Lesson one for me as hospital chaplain was that sometimes there’s nothing I can do.

2. Lying flat

In rest-as-resistance news, some Chinese millennials are “lying flat” in protest. I’m particularly interested in the connection activists make between overwork and hyper-consumption. That hamster wheel is not helping us in the U.S. either, plus it’s hard on mother earth.

The “lying flat” movement calls on young workers and professionals, including the middle-class Chinese who are to be the engine of Xi Jinping’s domestic boom, to opt out of the struggle for workplace success, and to reject the promise of consumer fulfilment. For some, “lying flat” promises release from the crush of life and work in a fast-paced society and technology sector where competition is unrelenting.
—David Bandurski, Brookings

3. Sometimes we DO

Last weekend, the confederate statues at the center of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right rally were finally deposed. I am proud of my small part in this, and I savored the moment with some activist friends. Here’s a word from Zyahna Bryant, the woman who, at age 15, first petitioned Charlottesville City Council to remove the statues.

zyahna bryant. @ZyahnaB

Okay, so what’s next?

4. Vacation stack

Does anyone else like to pull an unreasonably aggressive stack of vacation books? I almost never finish (or even start half of them TBH), but I always want good options. Here’s a peek at my stack for second-half-of-summer travel:

Thank you for reading

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