On the Pursuit of Doing Nothing
(originally written 5/9/2012)
When was the last time you took a vacation? A REAL vacation. Just taking a day off from work to stay at home doesn’t count. In order to take a vacation, you have to first vacate—empty your life and plate of all (or at least as many as possible) of your normal cares, responsibilities, and normal activities. You don’t have to create a vacuum—that only sets you to get sucked into countless other things on your “I really should do this” list.
It’s hard to vacate at home. There are too many reminders of things undone and things that constantly wait to get done after the “important” things finally get done. And at home it is too easy to be too available to anybody and everybody to encroach on your well-intentioned plans to do nothing. Even if you are successful at doing nothing at home, it is hard to let go of that nagging guilt that comes with deliberately choosing to ignore that “to do” list.
At home it is harder to define whether you are successfully “doing nothing.” Surrounded by stuff you normally would do if you were “goofing off,” you fall into old habits and your “doing nothing” becomes “doing the same thing that makes me feel guilty because I really should be doing something important.”
Doing nothing is not the same as goofing off. Goofing off really does carry the connotation—and baggage—of guilt. Doing nothing, on the other hand, serves a very useful purpose or two:
- It gives you the freedom to think about what gives you pleasure and what you’d do with a little time and lack of responsibility.
- It gives your mind and body a much needed rest, and that means it is more likely that when you do return to the “real world,” you can do so refreshed, and with a fresh perspective.
Really, we should feel guilty because we don’t take the time to “do nothing” every so often.
Doing nothing is somewhat akin to taking naps. “I don’t have time for naps!” is a familiar refrain, isn’t it? I make time for naps. A friend once told me about a study that showed that people who nap at least 4 times a week reduce their risk of heart attacks by 15%! So my naptime, in a way, is my daily attempt to escape to the place where “doing nothing” is not only allowed, but expected. And when viewed that way, it allows you to tell yourself and others, “I can’t do xxxx right now because I must go participate in my daily heart health regimen.” Who would argue with that?
Bob and I are finishing up a few days of “doing nothing” from the deck of a cabin at Pennyrile Forest State Park near Hopkinsville, KY. We’re sitting out on the deck and he’s looking at birds, and I’m sitting here typing on my laptop. Okay, so perhaps that qualifies as doing something, but for me, letting my thoughts wander from my brain through my fingers is something I don’t seem to find time to do at home. This lakeside cabin in the woods has provided a lovely—and much needed—retreat. Absent are most of the things we’d have at home “to do”—other than a television with many channels that seem to be 90% commercials and 10% stuff I wouldn’t waste time on, and a sitting room complete with fireplace (not needed in May!) and kitchen, there is little to do here. Even my cell phone won’t work here.
That took a little getting used to when we first arrived just two days ago. Faced with endless possibilities of doing nothing, it was hard to get past “okay, now that we are here, what do we do?” We’ve spent much of our doing-nothing vacation sitting out here on the deck, looking and listening for birds, and catching occasional glimpses of other “visitors,” like the orange tabby cat who came by one night and let it be known that he’d be happy to go in and/or have a treat. And the raccoon that waddled by that reminded us of our Maine Coon cat Kuiper, back at home no doubt terrorizing Kiko, our black Siamese cat.
Yesterday we drove an hour north to spend the morning at the John James Audubon State Park on the northern Kentucky border. We wandered on trails for a bit and then walked through the museum. Okay, so that, too, was doing something. When we first made the reservations for the cabin we talked about making this side trip if we felt like it. We did, and I’m glad. We opted not to fill our entire trip with doing official things, and that’s a Very Good Thing.
There really is something to be said for doing nothing. Whether it makes it any easier for us to slide back into reality where we are once again forced to doing Important Things, I don’t know. But we’re already planning on making a Do Nothing Retreat an annual event.
It’s the least we could do.
© Melissa Clark Vickers 2013