For the Dutch website “Autisme Digitaal“, I wrote a blog about autism and rest. Below is an English translation. The image that goes with it was originally drawn for the “Aut of the Box” creative toolbox.
“What does rest mean to you?”
It is a question often answered in terms of reduction. Less stimulation. Less noise. Less obligation.
But what if rest does not arise from less world — but from a different relationship to that world?
For me, rest is not emptiness. Rest is a relationship.
When I am with my cat — Boris, my Bengal tiger cat — something shifts fundamentally. My breathing slows, my attention softens, my body settles into a rhythm no longer governed by expectations. It does not feel like escaping the world, but like coming home to another mode of presence.
To Be Moved
The feeling that something emerges between you and the world — a reciprocity that is not forced — is described by the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa as resonance. Not everything moves us. And it is precisely here that the difference between living and alienation resides.
The French philosopher Simone Weil calls attention the purest form of giving: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Attention is not an attempt to grasp or control, but a form of receptivity.
For many autistic people, such openness is complex. The world often arrives too intensely, too much, too unfiltered. And yet, there is also a profound sensitivity to those moments when something does align — when the world does not overwhelm, but resonates.
For me, this often happens with animals.
An Answer Without Words
A cat that comes to lie beside you asks nothing — at least, nothing in human terms. But that does not mean there is no reciprocity. The relationship is not empty; it is differently structured.
The philosopher of science Donna Haraway describes human–animal relations as becoming-with: relationships in which both parties are involved and mutually shape one another. There is a rhythm, a proximity, a subtle attunement in which both bodies respond — not through language or social codes, but through presence.
Rosa describes resonance as a movement in two directions: being moved and responding — a reciprocity in which both are changed. It is precisely here that space for rest emerges: not because the animal demands nothing, but because it asks something different — something that does not first need to be translated.
Vitality and Resonance
Resonance is a mysterious concept. As Rosa argues, it is fundamentally unavailable (unverfügbar). It cannot be forced, optimised, or planned. And yet, it happens.
When resonance occurs, something shifts at a fundamental level. The world itself does not change — but our relationship to it does. What once felt flat or overwhelming gains depth. What felt chaotic becomes coherent. Or perhaps more precisely: it begins to speak back.
The medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen described a vital force present in all living beings. In that light, resonance is not an exception, but a moment of access — a vibration between human and world that has always been possible.
For an autistic nervous system, with a different kind of permeability (not lesser, but differently attuned to the world), resonance takes on a particular intensity. What becomes visible here is not only an individual sensitivity, but also a friction with an environment rarely designed for reciprocity. Perhaps the issue does not lie in the nervous system, but in the world it encounters.
The Limits of Control
In a world increasingly driven by acceleration and competition, resonance becomes structurally more difficult. As Rosa notes, we are constantly compelled to move faster — not to get ahead, but simply to keep up. We do not run in order to arrive somewhere, but to avoid falling behind.
In such a world, precisely that which enables resonance disappears: openness, reciprocity, the capacity to be moved. Perhaps resonance is therefore not only a personal phenomenon, but also a political one.
A related idea echoes in the Bible: “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Stillness here is not absence, but another way of knowing — a relational knowing that emerges when control is, briefly, relinquished.
A World Without Obligation
What animals offer me is precisely that space. They do not demand optimisation, explanation, or constant availability. In a society driven by speed and adaptation, this is almost radical.
With animals, I do not have to perform. I only have to be present.
And perhaps that is the essence of rest: not the absence of the outside world, but the absence of obligation.
Redefining Rest
If we continue to understand rest as “doing nothing for a while”, we miss something fundamental. Rest is not always withdrawal — sometimes it is a different way of being connected.
For me, rest does not lie in silence alone, but in a relationship in which I do not have to constantly translate, anticipate, or comply. A relationship in which the world does not approach me as a task, but as something that gently touches me — and waits for a response.
For me, that place begins very small. On the sofa. With Boris, my Bengal tiger cat, beside me.
And a world that, just for a moment, does not ask: “What still needs to be done?”
But whispers: “You are already here.”