Doing Less

These days of December have been difficult for me – the winter months are all about rest, recovery from the rest of the year…not doing anything in payment for the frolics of the spring, summer and fall. And here’s me, unsure of what to do with myself in this “resting” period. Resting means…not moving, right? So when I read books, it’s resting, right? Knitting is resting, right? Writing is resting, right?

Well, if the mind and body are connected, when I engage my mind, my body is engaged as well. So reading, knitting and writing are not resting.

To rest. What does that mean, exactly? Can I watch movies and rest? Can I meditate and rest? Is it resting if I just lie here, unengaged with my friends, but present in body? This resting thing is not exactly boring, but the idea of the things I could be producing with all this downtime floods my mind whenever I ask myself what I’m going to do today, whenever I think of what I’m not doing.

After two weeks of concentratedly doing less, or nothing at all, the urge to Do Something is still strong. I’m afraid that I really will like not doing anything, that I will turn out to be a lazy bum, and that doesn’t sit well with my expectations of myself, or what I think others expectations are of me. In one sense, doing less is one of the hardest things I’ve tried to do, just in the way it makes me aware of what I fill my days with and how little it all mean anyway. Emails, reading books for fun, knitting hat after hat for no other reason than to be productive, ‘just for something to do’ – it makes me realize how little I need to do, and hey, maybe I’m a little afraid of myself, or of the nothingness within that’s not taken up with an activity. An activity that distracts me from myself, from seeing me as I am, a person who is trying not to pay attention to the elephant in the middle of the room. What is the elephant?

The nothingness within myself.

Does everyone have this?

Does everyone distract themselves? Seems like it.

I want to think there must be more to me than nothingness.

What if there’s not? What if all I can do is experience each moment and that will be enough to fill me, occupy me?

Life would be simpler.

Meditation would be quieter.

I could think about things other than myself.

It could be a good thing. This stillness, this nothingness within me, within all of us.

The world would be quieter. You could hear the birds outside, the snow falling. People laughing in the tent next door. Humanity.

Instead of insulating yourself.

We all insulate ourselves. From ourselves and the rest of the world. Because we’re scared of ourselves?

Is this why everyone gets depressed in the winter? Distractions are distilled to their essentials in winter, until we’re finally confronted with ourselves.

That is what I’m confronting; myself. So many are afraid to look at themselves, but what better time of year?

With this, I’m taking a hiatus from blogging. I don’t feel the need so much to write, more of the need to Not.

Not do.

It’s difficult, let me tell you. I’ve already got plans for my non-blogging time.

Like nappingJ