One of the members of our beloved board of directors at VIAHR (Vacation is a Human Right) has written an ode to rest and the importance of taking a break.
Next, this wonderful text written by our dear and esteemed Mario J. Paredes:
Although it may sound paradoxical, rest is a human "activity." In other words, amid the many daily activities we engage in, human beings must have time dedicated to rest and recreation. Rest must be an activity that is respected, conscious, learned, and planned.
Today, more than ever, human beings are subjected to work schedules that fatigue, enslave, and dehumanize us; to rhythms of occupations and obligations that exhaust us and cause us to lose sight of the joyful and transcendent dimension of existence. Because life cannot consist of incessant activity, activism, and work in order to live, but rather—quite the contrary—work must be an activity that helps us live, to enjoy the celebration of life.
Human beings today live as slaves to productivity, as machines in the service of efficiency, as robots in the service of performance and utility. The value of human life seems to be measured by the amount of production. As Harvey Cox says, today's man "has bought prosperity at the price of a dizzying impoverishment of his vital elements." And, immersed in this drive for activism, we have been losing sight of the truth, value, and meaning of life and human existence. We have gained in terms of production and work performance, but we have lost in terms of quality of life.
That is why rest cannot become merely an "active break," an appendix in the midst of daily hustle and bustle, a moment to release tension, always conditioned and dependent on one's usual work.
Rest must be a necessary and vital space-time that helps us renew our entire being, our goals, purposes, and intentions; an "activity" that helps us rediscover our deepest and truest values, talents, and interests. Rest must be the space-time that restores the humanity of our existence, through enjoying reconnecting with our roots and with our loved ones and friends, through entertainment, enjoyment, celebration, gratitude, contemplation, nature, enjoying the simplicity of small, everyday things, through silence, music, and the experience of love.
Rest as a human dimension cannot be reduced to a few days of vacation "to have a good time" while most days "we have a bad time." Rest must be an integral part of our entire existence. Not everyone who interrupts their daily activities and work to "rest" by taking a few days of vacation always returns feeling rested. Almost always, vacations become times of greater exhaustion and a source of all kinds of new worries.
Resting requires us to reevaluate everything in our lives, to put into perspective what is of little or no importance and to find and focus on what is important and essential in human life. Because much of our anxiety and fatigue stems from the absolute value we place on many things that are relative and fleeting, accidental and circumstantial, additions to life... Resting means reconnecting, tuning in, and integrating with ourselves, with others, with all that we are, have, experience, surround us, and with the Transcendent. Resting means renewing ourselves—from within—to avoid the fatigue caused by routine, by the inability to discover grace and novelty in all the activities and events of our personal, family, and social history.
All of which means, first of all, that rest is, I repeat, a very important "activity"—personally, socially, and for families—that we need to reflect on, learn about, and practice. Secondly, rest must be a right for every human being and an activity to which organizations, institutions, and companies all give due importance, with the certainty that employees who are better rested and have a better quality of life also ensure better quality in their work performance and production.
To address the urgent need for rest and "knowing how to rest," to avoid what we know in English as "burnout,"burn out, that is, exhaustion to the point of physical and emotional depletion due to prolonged situations of fatigue and stress, there is the foundation Vacation is a human right. – VACATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT of which I am a part, and you can find information about its mission, tasks, and programs at our website 
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VACATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT is an organization that promotes counseling, training, and experiences for relaxation, with the aim of improving the quality of life of those who use its professional services. I invite you all to learn about this organization dedicated to relaxation, but above all, I invite you to make your lives better and more humane through the activity of relaxation.
