SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

With any luck, by the time you are reading this, we will have had a glorious weekend of warm sunshine, long walks, bike rides, kayak paddles, barbeques and all the things people do when the sun comes out in Seattle. 

What did you do last weekend? Did you clean your house?  Pay bills?  Do yard work?  Accomplish something so you didn’t feel like you wasted the weekend away?  Or did you enjoy the onset (finally) of summer, by leaving all that behind to play?

Here’s the thing. We are conditioned that we must always be achieving, working towards a goal.  Planning, scheduling, keeping busy.  Filling that calendar with more and more. No blank pages!  No wasted time!

What would happen if you decided to spend an entire weekend doing nothing? Actually scheduled it as your weekend plan.  Wrote it on the calendar? 

Saturday:  Nothing. 

Sunday:    Nothing. 

Of course, you’d have to prepare food and clean up and walk the dog and take the garbage out.  But what if you let all but the essential chores go? 

Here’s what could happen.  By allowing yourself to do whatever moved you in the moment, your brain might slow down enough to rediscover its own thought pattern.  Your stream of consciousness could awaken a creative spark, leading you to paint or write or dust off your camera.  You might pick up a book of poetry you used to read, or wander through the woods at Discovery Park, or spontaneously visit with a friend and spend the day together.

During the summers my family spent sailing up the northwest coast, we intentionally left phones, computers and televisions behind.  I used to tease the girls at the beginning of our trip asking, “Who wants to watch Sesame Street?”  They’d both say “Mee-eee!” and then, unhappily, realize the joke.  (Cruel, I know, but I couldn’t resist.) Without the usual distractions to amuse us we played cards, read, baked bread and looked for eagles perched along the shoreline. We made up games with things we had on the boat.  We created and connected and became available to one another.  Instead of responding with my usual “Just a minute,” when asked for something, I was able to say, “Sure!”  Because there was no reason to do otherwise. The basic, necessary chores felt less burdensome, less obligatory. The kids returned home from our trips noticeably matured, taller, with exponentially increased vocabulary and language skills. All of that “nothing” we did created perceptible growth in our children every year.

During a yoga retreat some years ago, our teacher led us on a walk outdoors asking us to isolate our senses one at a time.  We focused first on sight, observing the beautiful shades of green, droplets of water on leaves and blades of grass, spider webs, the subtle motion of tiny creatures and insects.  We listened: to birds, the sound of our feet on the path, the breeze gently blowing through the leaves, a seaplane in the distance.  We smelled: pine, flowers, rain, damp earth.  We felt: the cool air on our skin, the bark on the trees, the leaves of plants we passed.  We even took off our shoes and walked barefoot through the cold, wet morning grass.  Last, when we returned to the yoga studio, we tasted orange slices and raisins, the intense flavors exploding in our mouths.  Our purposeful focus allowed us to fully experience us the richness of each moment. To experience presence.

Later, I tried the same exercise sitting by the pond during a break.  After about 15 minutes, I thought, “OK, that’s enough,” and was about to bolt and go find someone to talk to or DO SOMETHING with, when I noticed some little bugs on the surface of the pond, barely visible, making almost imperceptible ripples where they landed.  About eight ducks suddenly flew in and crash-landed in the pond with a noisy splash. Up in the trees, a couple of birds began twirping and tweeting back and forth, clearly communicating. The place was humming! The longer I stayed the more I noticed.  My mind relaxed as I discovered an entire world that existed in the tiny universe of the pond.  Aha! Lessons of our boat trip revisited.

Nothing is something.  Intentionally doing nothing can result in rediscovering something that we have forgotten or have de-valued.  Observe, for example a Great Blue Heron.  He stands by the edge of the water, perfectly still, seemingly paralyzed, for 10, 20 minutes.  But then, if you take the time to wait for it, you will see him begin to move almost imperceptibly, crouching down, unfolding his long, s-shaped neck as he points his dagger-like beak toward the water, and then, SNAP!  He spears a fish and swallows it whole followed by a one-gulp water chaser. It takes patience to watch long enough for the end result, and it is a lesson in believing strongly enough in something to wait for it. Instant gratification is not a Heron’s modus operandi. 

Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet whose poetry stems from keen observations of nature and the life lessons inherent in doing so, writes in her poem, The Summer Day,

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass

How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields…

…Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

Indeed.  How do you want to spend your life?

A retired friend whom we met years ago on a boat trip while used to say with a twinkle in his eye, “The trouble with doing nothing is that you never know when you’re finished.” 

But at least you can start.  And that’s something.