Nothing

I know what you're thinking -- doing nothing is an oxymoron. But doing nothing, at least well, takes as much devotion and care and concentration as doing something. Doing nothing is an art as powerful as being able to sculpt, or dance, or turn a small investment into a fortune. It requires the rare ability to let go of expectations and simply embrace what is. It demands rejection of the belief, drummed into most of us in childhood, that not being busy is a sin.

Now, let us not mistake doing nothing for its whiny, ill-tempered sibling, avoidance. Avoidance is a false art, like reality television, merely a form of distraction that keeps us from achieving pure nothingness. Avoidance is cleaning the house when we're supposed to be studying for that bar exam. It's deciding to finally learn how to make Thai food at home, not because we really want to but because it puts off the looming deadline we don't want to think about.

"What are you doing?" my homies asks when they calls. "Nothing," I answer. But this is not true. I'm putting enormous time and energy into answering e-mail, or answering the call, or just simply writting. I'm not really doing anything; I'm just not doing something else, something more worthwhile in the hierarchy of somethingness. There is a difference, and it's an important one, because not understanding it will lead you astray from the path to pure nothingness.

Truly doing nothing requires accepting nothingness in its complex totality. I stretched out on the sofa watching television is not really doing nothing, I am only not doing whatever else it is he has been asked to do or ought to be doing. Like reading the paper, I am distracting himself, and the effort required to maintain that distraction precludes having a genuine experience of nothingness.
Really doing nothing requires that you commit yourself to it. You must rejoice in it unapologetically, not with fear of discovery or worry at being mistaken for a slacker but with the confidence of someone who knows what she's doing and doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

And just what does one do when doing nothing? Doing nothing, as we've discussed, does involve doing something. That something, though, is different for each of us. My nothing is not necessarily the same as your nothing, just as your something is not my something. What our nothing doing must be for it to be effective, however, is a complete break from the something we are usually doing.

For example, let's say that the something I'm usually doing is replying to emails. In my case, my nothing may involve walking to the beach and watching the waves try to change the shape of the coastline. If your something is, say, picking your nose, or pretending to be the president of the United States, you might choose as your nothing sitting on a rock counting stars, or maybe an hour or two of finger a pussy.
The point is, your nothing isn't really nothing, it's whatever your something isn't. Nothing doing is an active revolution against the various somethings we crowd our lives with, an activity (or nonactivity) we do simply because it's not demanded of us.

Just as the profundity of a musical piece is often found not in the notes, but in the spaces between them, the beauty of nothingness resides in the quiet pauses between doing. There, in the center of the storm that is most of our daily lives, true reflection can occur. It's there, in what we mistakenly call nothingness, that our lives really come into focus and we see what it is we're doing and who it is we've become.

And that is why so many of us are afraid of doing nothing. Many years ago I had read in a book which said that meditation was dangerous because it taught practitioners to empty the mind. This, we were warned, was to be avoided at all costs because if the mind were truly emptied, in that split second when all distractions were swept from our heads, Satan himself would seize the opportunity to leap in and take up residence. Once he was in there, we were assured, we were goners.

As my own disastrous initial attempts at meditation proved, Satan apparently isn't as quick as all that. He's probably too busy doing something.

Still, I fear that we've become a nation of people afraid of clearing our minds, of coming face-to-face with nothing, because we don't want to face our demons. Certainly that's what the actions of our so-called leaders -- religious, political and otherwise -- would suggest. And it's what the actions of those of us who keep those leaders in power would suggest.

I wonder, though, what would happen if we were all to engage in a little more nothing doing. Maybe, by sweeping out all of the clutter that accumulates in our heads from doing something all the time, we'd discover what's truly important in our lives. And if we could do that, then perhaps we really could make something out of nothing.

ADVICE

-- Do it tomorrow
-- Unplug or turn off the phone
-- Get horizontal (or at least diagonal)
-- Don't worry
-- Stop making lists