A Rest that Lasts

Beyond Self Care

This article is part of the Claritas spring 2022 issue, Flourishing. Read the full print release here.

BY AMY CROUCH

Writing at 11pm on the top floor of Olin Library, I spy a ballpoint-pen scrawl on the side of my study carrel: “SELF-CARE IS REVOLUTIONARY.” 

It’s one more note in a now-familiar tune. Sitting in my inbox is an email from VP Ryan Lombardi telling me to “prioritize self-care” during my busy student schedule. Companies eager to sell me anything from leggings to car insurance tell me that “it’s okay to take a break” by—surprise!—buying their products. 

The term “self-care” has saturated our lives in 2022—Google searches for it peaked in 2020, dwarfing their status in 2005—but the idea has a long and complex history. [1] Caring for the self is, of course, something humans have done as long as we have been humans. But the story of self-care’s contemporary explosion begins within the academy, where thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Audre Lorde analyzed care for the self in ways that, decades later, have trickled down to our Instagram pages.

The French critic Foucault, a polarizing yet influential figure whose followers have dominated the academy since the 1980s, was fascinated by what he called “the care of the self.” He argued that it was pervasive throughout ancient philosophical texts, defining it as the desire for men to “transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre.” [2] Meanwhile, the Black feminist thinker Audre Lorde framed  “self-care” as a form of rebellion against oppressive institutions. While fighting the devastating cancer that would ultimately claim her life, she insisted that for Black and disabled women, self-care was an inherently political act: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”—a quote you may well have encountered on your Instagram page, complete with pastel background. [3]

Where Foucault saw “care of the self” as primarily a practice of self-improvement for the ruling class, Lorde saw self-care as a tool for the most marginalized persons in society to remain human despite dehumanizing forces. And facing an abrupt and miserable death, she argued that physical and communal comfort were essential to making meaning out of her remaining days. But for both of these thinkers, caring for the self is done in the context of self-determination: one creates and cultivates one’s own self despite social pressure either to conform or to disappear.

At the same time as Foucault and Lorde were writing about self-care, the actress Jane Fonda was selling a different angle on self-care, releasing neon-striped and fluffy-haired workout videos. Since then, this notion has come to dominate mainstream culture. The “wellness” industry has ballooned to an estimated $1.5 trillion with no signs of slowing down. [4] Its sales pitch is a smoothie of Foucauldian self-improvement blended into Lordean self-love: “treating yourself” with bubble baths, ten-step skincare routines, and silk pillowcases, but also disciplining yourself to eat and exercise to the extremes of health and youth. Wellness is everywhere. 

What can we learn from this flood of self-care? On one level, it’s no surprise that we’re looking for ways to take care of ourselves. Humans are needy, vulnerable creatures; we need to clean our teeth, protect our skin from the elements, and wash our bodies of dirt. But the modern industry of self-care sees the simple practices of physical self-care as going beyond our bodies’ physical needs. The cultural critic Jia Tolentino, describing herself buying serums and moisturizers to cope with post-election paralysis, writes that she was “unsure if I was buying skin care or a psychological safety blanket, or how much of a difference between the two there really is.” [5]

Thus, consumerist and academic visions of self-care both identify a fundamental problem: Humans are deeply wounded in body and soul. Audre Lorde’s manifestoes of self-care sprang from her encounter with a vicious liver cancer—and while not all of us will die so brutally, every one of us is on a relentless march towards death. In this light, the bubble bath isn’t solely a way to soothe aching limbs, but is a balm to make the wounded whole and to heal the aching—sin-sick?—soul. 

For Foucault and Lorde, this wound is inflicted by being on the receiving end of institutionalized force; the gauzy Instagram ads leave the villain conveniently unnamed. What can you do about suffering? You can take care of yourself, says VP Lombardi. 

I’m intrigued by the formal similarities of contemporary self-care—take a day off, don’t let work dominate your life, get plenty of sleep—to a truly ancient religious ritual: the Sabbath.

This commandment we often forget begins with “Remember.” The Israelites, escaped from slavery in Egypt and set apart to be God’s people, are commanded to set apart a holy day away from all work: 

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it” (Exodus 20:10-14 NRSV). 

The Sabbath is offered to a people who have escaped horrific slavery. But we should note the justification that God offers: the Israelites should rest because the Lord did too. Before sin and suffering entered the world, God Himself saw fit to rest after all of His work.  

Pause and consider the astonishing promise of this command. Imagine what your life would look like with a day of total rest each week: no obligations, no studying, no long library hours. 

Doesn’t that sound like self-care? 

The Sabbath commandment presumes that you and I are weary and wounded; that our community is broken; that even the land we live on is overworked. And God’s command signals that a ritual—a simple weekly rhythm, lived out in practical details—can bring healing and hope. Our work is not meant to destroy and deplete us. Like God’s work, it should be fruitful and delightful, and then punctuated by a day of holy rest.

Sabbath, like self-care, offers an answer to the problem of human brokenness and loss. But its message is crucially different. 

Self-care suggests two reactions to our plight (our march towards death): it seeks to soothe and improve. In some contexts, we’re told to find comfort: to get plenty of sleep, to eat delicious food, to wear beautiful clothing. But we’re also told to improve ourselves through our (often laudable) pursuits—pushing yourself through a workout, eating seven servings of fruit each day, planning your days in an elegant leather-bound journal. 

This spirit of self-optimization whispers that maybe, just maybe, we can defer our death by a few blessed days. Maybe we can make our fragile, limited years just a bit longer and more healthy. Self-care culture comforts us when we remember that death is nigh, and it gives us tools that tempt us with the promise that “you shall not surely die.” 

The Sabbath is rooted elsewhere. In the Scriptural laws that give us the Sabbath, there is no sense that any individual is capable of saving himself—and even if he can improve himself a bit, that’s not the purpose of Sabbath. Sabbath, as carefully codified in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, is embedded within a system of atonement: sacrifices—literal, bloody sacrifice of living creatures—that take away sins. The Sabbath does not “fix” anyone. You do not rest to reward yourself or improve your character. 

No; these laws call humans to rest because there is a God, and not just any God, but a particular God of a family, the family of Israel. The Sabbath is oriented towards God: there is a divine, all-powerful, all-loving Person who deserves all worship, and we are made to rest in Him. The seventh day is to be kept holy—that holiness radiates into healing and goodness for the community, and is the animating center of the week.

Indeed, in this sense Sabbath is the very opposite of soothing self-care. To “remember the Sabbath day” is to remember how tiny, frail, and unimportant we are. The world goes on spinning, the stars continue their vast march, the universe continues to expand even if you or I take a break—and will keep doing so when each of us dies. Outside of the context of the Hebrew Bible, this is a terrifying thought. But if this is a commandment from a loving God, the call to remember our weakness and death is no longer terror, but wisdom. 

In some senses, Sabbath sounds less empowering than Instagram self-care. In the wellness industry, you and I can take action to heal ourselves; we can fight the forces of sin and death with a yoga mat and a water bottle. But I’ve come to believe this promise is a trap.

If I can restore my body to health with a few careful steps, then my own sickness results—sometimes subtly, sometimes not—because I have not taken action. If you can indeed address your fear and sadness by taking advantage of Cornell’s mental health resources and going for a walk around Beebe Lake, your illness becomes your responsibility. Those who are sick become those who didn’t do enough. If you can be perfect—or, no, that’s not a word that a self-help influencer likes, let’s say healthy, whole, well, alive—the can slips swiftly into a should. And, eventually, into a must. 

What’s the purpose, then, of all the rituals? If I can fix myself with my rituals, they become obligations. If I can’t, the rituals become meaningless: applying lip balm at the edge of the abyss. 

But the Sabbath is rooted in an identity and a calling. Our identity is not in Cornellian go-getting, and we do not need to soothe our fear of death with ice cream (soothing) or pushups (improving). We are not self-sovereigns, but self-stewards. We have meaningful agency—but not self-ownership. We are given gifts which are indeed to us, but their purpose is for the worship of God and the flourishing of those around us. Sabbath reminds you: you are not your own. 

And for Christians, the Sabbath gives us a new kind of responsibility—but not, note, to heal ourselves. Rather, Jesus inaugurates the great Sabbath Himself. He speaks directly to those of us who are weary and need care: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But Jesus’s offer of rest is not hiding away our burdens and resting in dreamless oblivion: it is taking up a new yoke. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” says Jesus: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

It’s mysterious, no doubt. Indeed, it deeply puzzled none other than Michel Foucault, who told an interviewer in 1984 that “there is a paradox of care for self in Christianity, but that is another question.” [6] Jesus tells us that finding true rest requires taking up a burden. But not a heavy one: one that is light. We find rest in taking up a yoke and learning from it. The Sabbath is a yoke. What yoke is it? I’d humbly submit that it is Jesus’ own cross (Matthew 16:24). For when Jesus died, He took a Saturday—a Sabbath day—to rest. Jesus calls us to follow His way of rest all the way to the grave. 

Beneath self-care yawns the abyss. We will die: every bubble bath and late morning brunch can only soothe us on the long journey to death. But beneath the Sabbath, beneath Jesus’s offer of rest, is a death: the death of One on the cross. Sabbath rest does not require us to obscure the abilities or the disabilities we bear. All of us are called to death—because beyond the cross is life. Sleep is the uncanny sister of death; rest would be unbearable death if there was not life. 

We are humans, created as physical bodies, made in God’s image. To tend to our dry skin and exhausted limbs, to be reminded that we are worthy not because of what we do but because of our nature as Beloved—such practices should not be lightly dismissed. But if anything, what we have is worse than dismissal: the powers of our age have co-opted the language of care to persuade us that we are autonomous creatures whose primary obligation is to the self—and that we can heal our deepest hurts by our own actions. 

The Sabbath, instead, cares for the deeply lost, work-afflicted soul—by anchoring us in love and community and sending us out to give our very lives away. By keeping the Sabbath day holy, we prepare for our death and look toward our resurrection. 

This article appeared in Claritas’ Spring 2022 Flourishing Issue.

SOURCES

[1] “Self-Care,” Google Trends, accessed April 30, 2022, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F0cs1l4 

[2] Richard White, “Foucault on the Care of the Self as an Ethical Project and a Spiritual Goal,” Human Studies 37 (2014), 489–504 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-014-9331-3

[3] Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988), 132.

[4] Shaun Callaghan, “Feeling Good: The Future of the $1.5 Trillion Wellness Market,” McKinsey, April 8, 2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/feeling-good-the-future-of-the-1-5-trillion-wellness-market 

[5] Jia Tolentino, “The Year That Skin Care Became a Coping Mechanism,” New Yorker, December 18, 2017,  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-year-that-skin-care-became-a-coping-mechanism 

[6] Raul Fornat-Betancourt et al, “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 12:2-3 (1987): 112-131, https://doi-org.proxy.library.cornell.edu/10.1177%2F019145378701200202