The Sweet Art of Doing Nothing
Copyright bohomofo.com
It’s been an absolutely glorious Winter’s day at the witch’s cottage Bohemians. Taking heed of this morning’s dire astro warning exhorting us all not to kill anyone and then try to blame it on the Sun Pluto opposition, I resolved to take today to myself and spend it doing as little as possible.This is not as easy as it sounds and every bit as indulgent.Our lives now are ridiculously overscheduled and crazy busy. Most of the time we are juggling a little bit of everything. Our fabled newfangled technology now means that we’re increasingly expected to be always contactable and never out of reach. This means we work more hours, even if we think it’s just a little bit here and there. We have less down time. The delineation that used to be there between work time and home time is a fluid continuum that some days doesn’t seem to even exist anymore. This is the same for our school kids, who can no longer escape a bad day but instead have it writ large on social media. We lose our me time. Our recovery. Our recharge.There is a card that comes up a lot when I read tarot in the city, as I do once a week, that suggests taking some time to yourself. For yourself. The reaction is generally rolled eyes, perhaps a reluctant nod of the head, it has once been genuine horror. For some people the idea of even just five minutes to themselves doing something as simple as sitting in the sun with their phone out of reach and out of earshot is untenable. This is a tragedy of the highest order, the lost art of doing nothing in our modern world.In drama, it is called “action and recovery”. This idea demands high levels of work followed by extreme levels of being idle, just sitting and doing nothing. It is a zen habit of the highest order and considered one of the most difficult to master. There are websites devoted to teaching time poor stress heads the how-to’s of this art, which strikes me as fundamentally ridiculous. Perhaps, as you are now, time spent reading about doing nothing is better spent, you know, doing nothing.Today I spent many hours in the sunshine. I watched bees buzz in the golden rays of the lavender. I watched the wind move the trees and every so often when a cloud drifted across the brightest of blue skies, I watched it meandering too. I read a little and thought a lot. I played with my talking cat and smiley faced pup and lay on the warm ground with them. I stared out across the golden grasses waving from the paddock in front of my home and let my mind just wander. I did not call it back.This evening as night has fallen and the hearth is crackling behind me, I feel rested and content. I feel absolutely no guilt and that makes me smile most of all. The time I took for myself today was wonderful and I am so proud of myself for making it.This week coming, as life comes at you from all angles, take a sec Bohemians and put your feet up. Take a whole moment, a few more if you can. Schedule it in if you have to. Lock the gate and open all the doors. Turn off the phone. Back away from the screen. Get thee outside and lay on the grass in the sunshine.It turns out that doing nothing is really something.