Not Doing Nothing

I am in drizzly Derby for a few days visiting the progeny, and find myself momentarily alone and unbusy in my son’s house, with access to the internet and to that that weird and wonderful phenomenon known as Free Time. It is a strange and unfamiliar feeling, overcast by a sense of Waiting for Something to Happen, like a clear blue interlude in a cumulus-ridden sky.

It is both lovely and awful to have Nothing To Do. Throughout a hectic city life of full-time, stressful work combined with bringing up children and searching for the Meaning of Life, I longed for the day when I could walk away from all those heavy responsibilities, and Just Sit. But it really doesn’t take many minutes of Just Sitting, to realize that doing nothing can be just a teensy bit dull.

Of course, I suppose the level of dullness depends on things like whether you are simply doing nothing, or whether you are Doing Nothing in a Zen sort of way – which is actually quite a lot of effort in itself, and not dull at all. Or whether you are doing Nothing, when you really ought to be doing Something – especially a Something with deadline attached to it – in which case doing nothing is always Very Interesting indeed.

But the bottom line is this. You can only thoroughly enjoy doing nothing when you have lots of somethings to do. And a Life with nothing to do is No Life at all. A weekend is not a weekend without a week to end, and a rest is not a rest with no work to cease. Which I suppose is why, even though we once thought we wanted to ‘retire to our holiday home in the sun’, we have ended up instead starting a new chapter in our lives of work, as busy-busy farmers. As Dylan Thomas said,

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

And as I sit here with nothing that needs to be done, I can appreciate the differentness of this small, inactive gap in my otherwise busy life, in which I work not for pay but, as Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet entreats me, so that I “… may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.”