“We love to work at nothing all day.” – Bachman Turner Overdrive

I noticed at the end of the old year lots of commentary on the radio and in print about the virtues of doing nothing.  I think the premise of all these pieces was that our modern lives are consumed by distractions and attention-seeking media, such that we never turn off our brains, or rather, never disconnect from the clamor to the degree needed to settled down our inner minds.  So not literally doing nothing, just not doing things that mess up your ability to ponder, evaluate, reconsider, plan and create in a quiet mental state.

I wholeheartedly subscribe to this premise.  I have always cultivated my skills at doing nothing for this exact purpose.  Also, to avoid doing things I should be doing, while feeling self-satisfied that I’m actually using the time for deep thinking.  There’s no better way to loaf around without feeling guilty, since what you are actually doing is properly attending to healthy cognition. 

The authors’ prescriptions for treating this ailment always include taking long walks, presumably without your iPhone.  My wife and I walk our dog every day, so check that box.  None mentioned a technique I’ve developed over decades I call “Rotting on the front porch.”  This involves sitting out there half the year with a drink, these days fruit juice, and maybe a plate of cheese and crackers, occasionally with some sliced Italian sausage thrown in.  The key to this meditative practice is to leave all your devices in the house, and only bring along the dog, who can teach us all about the rewards of serious rotting behavior. 

When my niece was a little girl, she and I developed “The Lying Down Game.”  I would often come to her house after a long day at work to spend some time, and my only ambition was to lie flat on my back and stare up at the ceiling.  She was intrigued by this, and would join me on the floor.  We’d consume a fair amount of time doing this, interrupted only by occasional comments – nothing more taxing than discussing her time at school, or exchanging inane, impossibly unfunny jokes, which were nonetheless funny to the two of us.

All of this would be quite familiar to the Buddha, who taught that a quiet mind was the path to enlightenment.  He believed that forcing oneself to think was a fool’s errand.  Rather, one merely needed the mind to work unobstructed, to have the thoughts flow in naturally and unimpeded.  I think he was on to something, and maybe after a few thousand years of testing out the theory we could acknowledge the value. 

I’ve been doing a lot of woodworking lately, the thing I do along with writing.  I see the two pursuits as being essentially the same.  There’s a strenuousness to woodworking that differs from merely tapping on a keyboard, but in both activities, I take a lot of breaks.  I just sit and look around at my surroundings, which I find pleasingly chaotic, but also orderly in their own way.  Like my mind.  Even if it might appear to be a jumble to the unpracticed eye, to me, everything is where it ought to be, or will be as soon as I get off my ass and make an adjustment.  Or rewrite a paragraph.

This practice has likely improved with age, as my physical strength declines inversely proportionate to my talent for brooding and hashing things out by simply looking around. 

I could write more, but I think a productive break is in order.