The art of doing nothing

It truly is an art. Doing nothing. I’d love to say I’ve mastered it, but I’m not really good at it. That is, until I am.

Doing nothing, for me, is a guilty pleasure of sorts. The rare moments I allow myself to indulge in its wastefulness, that is. We face a million pressures every second of the day to be doing something. Not just something, multiple things at once. It’s hard to switch off the pressure pot called productivity at any moment’s notice. And yet, sometimes as satisfying as it is to scratch off completed tasks from your to-do list daily, the defiance of daring to deliberately do nothing is equally liberating.

Call it decompressing for those, (or is it just me?) who call slowing down a swear word and get restless at the thought of most conventional forms of self-care. Not even my cat chooses to sit on my lap because she knows I can’t sit still for more than five minutes.

But then again, in the true “mass of contradictions” character a friend once declared I was, every now and again I will allow myself the quiet luxury of sitting in a chair, staring out the window and completely zoning out for an hour or two, or, more realistically, half an hour that feels like an hour.

I’m a “chilled” person — at least I like to think I am, or rather try to come across that way, despite my head buzzing constantly with a swarm of bees. It would be exhausting, if they weren’t such a part of my lived experience that I barely notice their presence. But don’t be fooled, they’re there, pulling the strings, demanding my attention, dictating and scrutinising my thoughts and every move.

The magic of the art of doing nothing is that it sets them free. Lets them fly away in search of honey. Pollinate the flowers of my minds with seeds of dreams and wildlands of imagination. Until the clock’s constant ticking returns their sound to my ears, now angry at my having neglected them. Let’s not forget, added to the bees, the external pressures. Good and bad. Constantly reminding me of the importance of having a work-life balance. Checking in with your mental health.

What is that? Is my cheekily cynical answer to both of the above. But I do know better.

The secret is to do better, I tell myself as the bees in my head remind me there’s a growing list of health checkups I’ve been neglecting …

If the art of doing nothing is a guilty pleasure, the long list of personal admin I keep putting off is guilt-inducing in the most unpleasant way.

As a columnist, there’s the pressure to always be gleaming for the “interesting” angle on life. I’m not the most interesting person to begin with. After all, don’t I have to remind myself not to bore my friends too much with my overwhelming work chatter? What I call passion, I’m well aware many read as pain.

And then I get told I work too much and need to find a balance. I love that word. Balance. I can suck in my stomach and stand on one foot. I’ll hold that pose for a minute or more — Pilates trained me well. Does that count?

With all the bees inside and outside my head, sometimes, I just want to get off the bus altogether.

I’ve done a fair amount of travelling lately and I’ve been once again reminded that there’s something about being on the move that puts my mind and body into airplane mode. (Perhaps my phone also being in airplane mode often has something to do with it?)

Similarly, like how time stands still by the sea, the liminal space of being stuck between two places is balance enough for me. I don’t think I could ever tire of looking at clouds — I’ve got a folder in my photo gallery full of cloud pics. I’m a bit obsessed. Flights are never long enough as long as there’s clouds to glide along to. Or nonchalantly staring out the window of a moving vehicle, watching pastoral scenes of vast green land or flat concrete. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m moving.

Almost every long road or air trip I’ve taken, right back to my student days, I’d pack myself up with things to do. Books to read. Things to write. Assignments to complete. Only to board the bus or plane and have no desire to do anything except stare out a window. At nothing. At everything. Half the time I’m probably not even looking. My eyes go inward, or they close altogether. And with the gentle nod of music in my ears I transport my self further away than where I’ve come from and where I’m heading to.

This is the time to be truly with my thoughts and myself. Perhaps this is the other kind of self-care we should not neglect. To check in with our dreams and aspirations and make sure they don’t get lost in the subtext of everyday life.

It’s also a good time to make sure we haven’t lost touch with ourselves. With who we are and who we want to be amid a million expectations and roles pulling us in a million directions. Perhaps it’s the power of the pause. The pause I don’t allow myself time to take. In some ways it scares me. The idea of going from 100 kilometres an hour to zero.

Me time, people call it. And often resort to having to motivate for a space in one’s schedule to pencil in an appointment. With yourself.

But every now and then, there’s a magic moment, usually in transit of some kind, or when I’m too exhausted to entertain those busy bees in my head from propelling me like a puppet in circles.

I used to be a classic “are we there yet?” child. Throw in bad bouts of car sickness (perhaps due to my chronic case of day-dreaming out the window instead of watching the windy roads), my dad would often stop between PMB and Durban to let me pick flowers on the side of the highway. I don’t recall if this was my request or a ploy on his part to distract me from the discomfort of motion sickness or my impatience.

My recent in-transit introspections have reminded me that we all need to take a back seat from life sometimes to reignite our creativity.

Part of the power of the pause is learning to trust in the process that gets you from A to B. Search for flowers and fluffy clouds along the way and day-dream through the turbulence. Travel more, if that does it for you. But if you need to take an hour to sit and stare at a wall, you deserve it. Claim it shamelessly. Ideally, choose a wall with a pretty backdrop, or a nice spot in the sun.

The art of doing nothing, in this sense of the word at least, actually means the opposite. It means investing in yourself and all your future somethings.