Wasting Time

The art of doing nothing

For most of the nineties and a little of the noughties I was caught in the work ethic trap, maybe that should be the capitalist trap as they were the ones who benefitted. Basically, the ethic said you were only worth something if you were running pell-mell to some distant point and your time was not your own but owned by some big business who said nice things about caring and reward but basically wanted a pound of flesh and when they didn’t get it, like Shylock, wandered away to find someone else.

You were only good at your job if you put in long hours, stole time away from your family, gave the vast amounts earned back to the capitalist in return for mortgages and loans and consumer spending that tied you in position so the caring companies could do what they wanted with you, an expendable resource to be maximised.

I came to my senses in twenty-ten though it took me awhile to work out what I was supposed to be doing by way of some sketchy minimum wage part-time work in retail. I realised it wasn’t the money that was of value, it was time.

I had to learn how to use time wisely and that meant learning a new language that at first sounded selfish when I said it to people and I saw their look and they’d say things like: ‘but what will you do for money, what about holidays, what about, what about, what about, what about your pension?’ I was fifty years old, some of these advisers were younger than me and they were working for their pension. For me, that was a false premise, what if you never reached pension age, how good was the life then?

The need to be doing something was strong, centuries of conditioning by government and church had hammered into my DNA that I was only of use, only a good person, if I was doing something. One of the first tasks I had to learn was the art of doing nothing. It’s not easy, the mind has a habit of keeping going even when the body is flat out still. It works away using any avenue profitable to stop this waste of doing nothing, guilt, resentment, fear, anything to get me on my feet.

It took a long time before I worked out a way. A friend asked me if I was doing anything on such a day. I’d planned to do nothing. Saturday was my day for doing exactly as I want, usually nothing, maybe some light reading, even a little writing, listen to some jazz, eat, take a stroll with Alison and the dogs, but I decide, no one else.

I said I was doing nothing. They said, good could you help out at the whatsit if you aren’t doing anything? No, I say. But we need help, and you said you aren’t doing anything so what’s the problem? I didn’t say I wasn’t doing anything. I said I was doing nothing.

It’s a big important shift in perspective for me, all sorts of cogs and wheels begin whirring away, the need to be liked, the need not to upset someone, the need not to be the one not helping, the need of any one of a thousand things that I was conditioned to do. I was going against all that.

I don’t know what happened when there was a space where I was supposed to be, I got on with doing nothing and tried my hardest not to sweat over the expected comeback.

Doing my degree taught me that doing nothing was important. It’s these times when the brain freewheels, and the body relaxes. Often answers and questions appear, information gets lodged for later use or maybe never, the muscles and brain soften and let loose those toxins that keep it all together. New pathways appear in my brain connecting previously disparate events and items to make something new. Yesterday, I read in Bonjour Tristesse by François Sagan, she alludes to annoying people by referencing Jean-Paul Sartre quote, ‘Hell is other people.’ Oh my, that resonated to this introvert. I put it in my commonplace book and now I am using it.

Staring into space is good, just blankly staring letting images and sounds pass through unmeasured uncategorised. Reading something that is nothing to do with my life, what I am currently working, of no expected potential in the future. Listening to music, I found Glenn Gould that way, heard those sounds and rhythms and learned to work that in to my words on paper. Sleeping is good, especially the thirty minute naps, that really boosts creativity.

I would recommend doing nothing at some point each day, and for a whole day at least once a week. I mean nothing in terms of what others, society or THE MAN think doing something is. Doing nothing should have no expected outcome other than . . . fill in the blanks.

The strange thing about doing nothing, just laying, sitting resting, watching clouds drift by, hearing a gate close and thinking that’s so and so coming home from school, is that it does help put things into perspective, right sized and in their right place. Particularly people and vexations, the pebbles that disturb ones equilibrium and peace in the day. It’s almost as though the brain, as it relaxes and defrags, gets a chance to put all the right notes in the right place. And I think that is so important in today’s world.

I don’t need permission from anyone including myself. Monty our irascible annoying, irritating little dog that we love so much is an expert at doing nothing and proficient at finding the perfect spot to do nothing at.

We can learn a lot from the animal kingdom, they have been around far longer than we have and without the need for, that horrible in-word ‘growth,’ to justify their usefulness and existence.

Take care and good luck.

Paul