One of our beloved board members at VIAHR (Vacation is a Human Right), has written an ode to rest and the importance of taking a break.
The following is a wonderful text written by our dear and esteemed Mario J. Paredes:
Although it may sound paradoxical, rest is a human "activity". That is, in the midst of the many and daily activities we perform, the human being must have a moment dedicated to rest, to relaxation. Rest must be a respected, conscious, learned and planned activity.
Today, as never before, we human beings are subjected to work schedules that fatigue, enslave and dehumanize us; to rhythms of occupations and obligations that exhaust us and make us lose the joyful and transcendent dimension of existence. Because life cannot consist of an incessant occupation, activism and work in order to live, but - on the contrary - work must be an activity that helps us to live, to enjoy the feast of life.
Human beings today live as slaves of productivity, as machines at the service of efficiency, as robots at the service of performance and utility. The value of human life seems to be measured by the quantity of production. As Harvey Cox says, man today "has bought prosperity at the price of a vertiginous impoverishment in his vital elements". And, immersed in this drive for activism, we have been losing the truth, the value and meaning of life and human existence. We have gained in quantity of production and labor performance but we have lost in quality of life.
For this reason, rest cannot become just an "active pause", an appendix in the midst of the daily hustle and bustle, a moment to release tensions, always conditioned by and depending on the usual work.
Rest has to be a necessary and vital space-time that helps us to renew our whole being, our objectives, purposes and intentions; an "activity" that helps us to rediscover our values, talents and deepest and truest interests. Rest has to be the space-time that gives us back the humanity of our existence, through the enjoyment of the encounter with our roots and with our loved ones and friends, through entertainment, enjoyment, festivity, gratitude, contemplation, nature, the enjoyment of the simplicity of small and daily things, through silence, music, 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 has to be an integral part of our whole existence. Not always and not all those who interrupt their daily activities and work to "rest", taking a few days of vacation, come back rested. Almost always, vacations become times of greater exhaustion and a source of all kinds of new worries.
To rest requires us to re-evaluate everything in our lives anew, to relativize what is little or not important and to find and find what is important and essential in human life. Because a great part of our anguish and fatigue are born from the absolute value we give to many things that are relative and passing, accidental and circumstantial, additions to life... To rest is to reconnect, tune in and integrate with ourselves, with others, with everything we are, have, happens to us, surrounds us and with the Transcendent. To rest is to renew ourselves - from within - to avoid the fatigue that routine produces, due to the inability to discover grace and novelty in all the activities and events of our personal, family and social history.
All of which assumes, firstly, that rest is, I repeat, a very important "activity" - personally, family and socially - on which there is a need to reflect, to learn, to practice. Secondly, rest must be a right of every human being and an activity to which organizations, institutions, companies all give due importance, with the certainty that employees with better rest and quality of life, ensure - at the same time - better quality in work performance and production.
To meet the urgent need for rest and "knowing how to rest", to avoid what is known in English as the "burn out", i.e., exhaustion to the point of being physically and emotionally consuming, 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 member and whose mission, tasks and programs can be found at our website 
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VACATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT, is an organization that promotes counseling activities, training and experiences for rest, in order to provide better quality of life in the recipients of their professional services. I invite you all to get to know this organization for rest, but, above all, I invite you to make your lives better and more humane through the activity of rest.
