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Nothing is the New Something Lately, I have been spending lot of time doing nothing. That, coming from the Queen of Doing, is really something. I find it almost exhausting to do nothing, but highly constructive. I wish I had been trained in doing nothing long ago. My penchant for doing nothing started this summer when I observed the contentment that arose in my chest just by staring at the fire flies, from my patio chair. I have owned the chair for four years and hardly ever had time to take a seat, as I was always doing something. As My Big Number, age 62, draws near I realize that I am eligible for early Social Security and that some people retire at that age. I have planned nothing, have no time to retire, no money to do so in style anyway, and my spouse doesn’t want to retire. Retirement seems remote. But, the closest that I can get to it in the midst of life is to do nothing. So I tried. One summer day I plopped myself down on that patio chair and began doing nothing with a vengeance. My musing mind or my “monkey mind” as my meditation teacher likes to call it, roamed around my brain to better understand the essence of doing nothing, and whether it was as worthwhile as it seemed to be, while looking at the flies flickering. It was easy to muse. The fire flies randomly glowed from a copse of Cedar trees along the ridge on which my home is perched. This is my eleventh home. I moved mostly to have another house to decorate, another set of insurmountable tasks to take on. My homes were always fixer uppers. And since we have no skill in carpentry, electricity or any of the building trades, they were also money pits that forced us to work longer and harder and do something to pay the bills, This house was paying off -until the mortgage comes due-in vistas, fire flies, golden sunsets and romantic sunrises. This country home was meant for doing nothing, except drinking sarsaparilla and root beer floats (sugar free.). As my monkey mind flourished and my body languished on the patio chair, I began to evaluate different states of doing nothing. Monday morning meditation is an organized, spiritual and highly recommended way of doing nothing while appearing to do something. So is fishing. So there is this whole category of “GOOD” nothings that give you something noble or fun with which you can fill in the blank when asked “What are you doing sitting there?” Then there is a category of nothing that makes you think you are actually doing something but aren’t. Deleting e-mails is one of those. I have 3, 985 e-mails that take three days to review, file and delete. When I am through I have little to show for it except an obsessive satisfaction that I have “cleaned out” my e-mails. Other people are like this with sock draws. My mother had that feeling about the refrigerator. Cleaning out seems so noble that you are hard pressed to realize that you end up with less than you had in the first place, most notably your time. Yet, cleaning out is lauded as organizing and unburdening, even though we all know that we will be in the same place, with the same number of e-mails and loads of stuff a scant minute later. Philosophical questions arise when exploring whether nothing is actually something, whether it is worth while, and indeed whether any of us, at any time, can actually do nothing. Take the movies for example, or any passive entertainment, like TV (which is the only electronic medium that get the bad wrap of making you fat.) Somehow a guy snoozing on his hammock is a peaceful man, enjoying his sensitive side, while the guy watching football on the TV is a couch potato. Is nothing done in nature more noble than nothing done in the den? Is nothing done when your wife can’t see you doing nothing, really doing nothing? Then there are the bio/physical issues. Is sleeping a form of doing nothing? Daydreaming? Waiting on line for something? Sitting on a bus waiting to be transported somewhere? In the great film “Walleye,” humans were reduced to doing nothing and only crisis and conflict and hope brought them to action. Is that what we need to doing something? In other words, is doing nothing, except foraging or hunting for food, our natural state? Is that why Friday is better than Monday? WHY MOST HEART ATTACKS HAPPEN BETWEEN 6 AND 9 AM ON MONDAY MORNINGS, just after doing nothing and before the specter of doing something is before our eyes? Now I must be off to the gym. I would rather sit on my patio chair. I have only limited time to choose between doing something and doing nothing. I will choose the gym, but feel guilty that I am not doing nothing. It seems that doing something is the compulsion. Doing nothing is the reward for all the somethings. Maybe an eternity of doing nothing is what is meant by “going to your reward.” I hope not, that would drive me crazy.
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