Lately, I’ve been fantasising about rest. In music theory, such a brief moment of pause in the middle of a melody is symbolised by a rectangular block. Glimpsing it on a sheet feels promising — it means you could anticipate a second to catch your breath, hold your fingers above the piano in preparation for the next note. I sometimes wish there could be such a script for us in the midst of our everyday routine, a signal or symbol that furtively tells us to stop, pause, catch a break before resettling into activity. I’m not sure at what point in my childhood and early adolescence I internalised the gospel of hyper-productivity. Rest got equated with laziness. The last thing you wanted was to be the frolicking grasshopper that chilled the whole year through and forgot to replenish his stores, unlike the diligent ant, who never stopped labouring and whose reserves were, therefore, always in abundance. In every telling of this story, the grasshopper is shamed by the teller. The ant is celebrated for its fastidiousness, its relentless productivity. The moral of the story — be the ant.

Feminist discourse teaches you to seek the nuanced middle-ground. It also suggests we relieve ourselves of the burden of being solely accountable for storing up our pantries and instead, seek out collective units. What if the ant and the grasshopper partnered with each other? Perhaps the ant would have a more robust social life, and the grasshopper wouldn’t find himself with an empty granary. Couldn’t they live in a commune instead, and party together, host marvellous dinners, and share their trove of food reserves? Perhaps the grasshopper could teach the ant to chill a little, live a little, stop and smell the daisies.