The Sweet Art Of Doing Nothing
I have a dear friend named Edwina who is one of the gentlest souls I know, a compassionate friend to all living beings. To give you an idea, when a bear cub from God knows where showed up on her patio in suburban New Jersey, Edwina didn’t call Animal Control to trap it and cart it away. She left the cub milk at night and photographed it through her patio door, texting the photos to friends like a proud grandparent.
When I spoke with Edwina this past week, she mentioned how she loves the phase of the new moon, when the night sky appears especially dark and she can step outside and feel embraced by the darkness.
Inspired by Edwina’s example, I decided that each evening this week I would stop writing and shut down my computer as dusk descended. Luckily, my writing desk faces a series of windows. I watched in silence and watched as daylight grew dimmer and the sky became more opaque.
The best moments were just before the street lights blinked on and before my neighbors turned on house lights and drivers their headlights. In the growing darkness, I could still make out the skeletons of bare trees and the outlines of full pines as if they were painted on a black canvas. Their upraised branches were like arms reaching out to embrace the sky.
I often describe myself as a chronic workaholic. It’s hard for me to sit still, to engage in what my Italian friends would call il dolce far niente, “the sweetness of doing nothing.” But as I sat in stillness and silence, was nothing actually going on?
A sense of peacefulness washed over me. My breathing slowed. My shoulders relaxed. I had been working on a new book proposal and felt stymied by not being able to find a title that seemed right. Those few moments of “doing nothing” opened a space in my mind. I thought of a title that took me in a totally different direction than the others I’d considered. Perhaps it had been lingering in my unconscious all along but needed some moments of restfulness to emerge into the open.
Should I consider that doing nothing? Hardly.
A few years ago in a TED talk on taking pauses, former monk Andy Puddicombe asked, “When was the last time you took even 10 minutes to just do nothing?” Whipping ourselves into a constant whirl of activity is the way we miss out on much that’s important. “And the crazy thing is,” Puddicombe says, “Everybody assumes that’s the way life is, so we just have to get on with it.”
Only isn’t, and we don’t.
Back in the 6th century, St. Benedict, the founder of a western monasticism, recognized the importance of balancing activity with leisure. He organized the monastic day nearly equally between work, prayer, study and rest. The Benedictine motto “work and pray” is itself a plea for balance.
I received a lesson in balance on one of my first visits to Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, KS. One evening while I was still at my computer writing, the prioress of the monastery knocked on my door and invited me to join her and some visiting prioresses for an informal chat. Stupidly, I declined and kept on working. I missed a chance to get to know some fantastic women.
Hopefully I would make a different choice today. Sometimes it’s best to heed the advice of the White Rabbit in the Disney version of “Alice in Wonderland” who pleads, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
I’m grateful to my friend Edwina for encouraging me to pause, to sit in silence and watch evening come. I’m grateful for the reminder from the Benedictine sisters that there is a time to work and to stop work. From now on, I plan to make it a daily practice to sit in silence and watch dusk descends.
This week, can we take even 10 minutes to sit silently and just do nothing? Can we, like Benedictines monastics throughout the centuries, consider leisure holy?
