Sunday Reflection The Fine Art of Doing Nothing at All — It's NOT an Illness!

"What are you doing?"

Nothing...

It took my mother a number of years to understand that — as a kid — when I said I was "doing nothing" I quite literally was doing nothing at all. Most likely, I would be sitting in front of one of our windows, looking outside and otherwise not doing anything. If I'd been a robot, I suppose you would observe that I was in "standby mode."

Red rocks, Sedona, Arizona

If I had been a 7-year old in 2024, I would undoubtedly have been diagnosed as "on the Autism Spectrum," even though I had no issues with social interaction, no weird ticks, no obsessive hobbies or preoccupations or anything along those lines.

In time, Mom came to understand that when I said I was doing nothing, I really meant that I was doing nothing. I wasn't hiding anything or trying to get away with something. Which, of course, presented itself as a whole new problem because in her mind "young boys should be running around getting into everything all over the place."

And I mostly didn't. At least, I preferred not to.

Somehow, I managed to make it through childhood and adolescence with my nothingness intact. I suppose it baffled most people, and it continued to baffle people as I moved into adulthood.

I'm now 63 and gradually "growing into it" because it's acceptable that mature people are prone to being less (hyper)active.

Back then, the only person who didn't seem particularly baffled or concerned by the whole thing was my elderly Auntie — who was the one who helped raise me, part of the time — she offered up the voice of reason to my parents and others that they didn't really need to be concerned, and that I was actually perfectly OK. Of course she shared that through the lens of perception that one of her own favorite things to do in life was to pull up a chair outside her house, facing the yard and the woods, and just "sit and see."

In retrospect, I suppose it was a meditation, of sorts; a way to empty her mind of the day's thoughts and possible conflicts and dramas.

Clinging to life

I was probably in my early 30s before I really grasped how unusual it was to have a preference for doing nothing, and for largely experiencing silence inside your head, unless you were in the middle of engaging.

At that time I started going to a lot of spiritual and self-development retreats and workshops, and I learned that the vast majority of the world struggles to contain an ever-busy "monkey mind" that they apparently have no control over. There's always something going on in there, along with an almost constant urge to get up and do something, or move around, or talk to someone, or be engaged with something.

On some level, it actually felt mildly ironic that I found msyself sitting with a group of people who were paying lots of money to learn to find stillness in their beings, while I was sitting there trying to figure out why it was so weird that these same inner urges/voices other people felt seemed completely absent from my own life.

More than a decade (and some $30,000) later I was actually not a lot wiser, but had been advised to "consider myself blessed" by meditation gurus and "in denial" and porentially "mentally ill" by the mental health establishment.

But I think it's their mission to declare people mentally ill...

In the end, I think what matters most is that we make peace with who we are, and how we are. And in saying that, what is important is that we understand who we are and how our inner selves work, independently of what the opinions of others might be. A lot of people are somewhat uncomfortable with that because they feel compelled to put themselves into the neat little boxes containing the "societally acceptable norms" of the time.

Ironically, I have always struggled a good bit with ADHD-like tendencies. But they really don't manifest as any kind of hyperactivity, or an inclination to always be in motion, or to "fidget," but rather as a tendency to float from one thing to another while often struggling to concentrate on any one thing for any period of time without just drifting off into nothing.

Oak Creek, Arizona

Again, we adapt, pivot and make peace with who we are. I gradually embraced the idea that I will likely not author any books, but writing an 800-word article or blog post is a perfect fit for how my brain works.

And therein lies the final lesson/takeaway.

We often struggle so hard to adapt ourselves to a world that is not a good fit for us, as we are. It's a much older issue than we might think... dating back to the early industrial revolution when we gave up our natural rhythms for the construct of a factory whistle telling us "when" and "when not" to be on and off.

As we progress into the technological age we're now part of, the chance to exist on individual terms also returns. At least the opportunity is there. Seize it!

Thanks for visiting, and have a great week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2024-01-28 13:40 PST
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