The Happiness of Doing Nothing

When I am writing this, it's evening in India and birds are singing their hearts out near my window. I look at my puppy sleeping in the couch and there is a sense of bliss in me. A bliss of just taking these things happening around me. I have no idea what to do next. I am bored but content.

Can they both exist ?

I guess they can.

We have always been motivated to keep doing something. Lazy, unproductive are considered to be the traits of losers. All the motivational junk from Pinterest to Youtube reinforce that people doing nothing are doomed for failure. Hustle culture is celebrated. This pandemic should be our wake up call to revisit these beliefs.

When I meditate my mind screams the there are 1000 things I could be doing instead, there are thousands of productivity routines out there to be alive and running at every waking moment.

Why?

WHY IS NOT DOING SOMETHING A WRONG WAY TO LIVE?

We have been taught boredom is bad for our brain for years but lockdown changed it all. Studies today show that boredom can help with our mental well being. It's letting ourselves feel the uneasy feeling and bring in the awareness.

Why do we always have to keep struggling to reach our goals, putting up a fight and never ever giving up every second of the day. Can doing nothing a given slot of time paradoxically help us?

Why is taking a day off or cutting away all contacts to recharge oneself still not accepted by all.

A coffee by the window, taking in the breeze is fit into a rigid “morning routine”. Enjoying a diy hair mask and doing absolutely nothing is still a self care practice routine.

Can we do away with labelling our random acts of happiness into all these boxes?

Can we schedule one hour a day to do absolutely anything or nothing at all - sleep, paint, walk, read, make out, just gaze out the window and zone out, just practically anything (legal & sensible) or simply just be .

Just remember anything you do shouldn't have an end goal to it. Do it just because you have nothing to gain from it. Just taking a brush, dipping it in paint and getting our art out, just go crazy with it.

Our imagination is the limit.

Let's give ourselves full freedom to do nothing. To understand we are here and just living at this moment. Nothing else.

There is no “perfect” way to it, there are no influencers out there (yet) teaching us how to be bored and still look picture perfect.

If possible this “freedom schedule” can be carried out without any digital devices yet no compulsion that way. Keeping away from scrolling would help a lot.

This time is not going to be easy.

To smile at our minds screaming the best usage of this time, to avoid any distractions that make us work (oh, how pleasant I feel writing this), to explain it to puzzled folks what we are up to is going to take hella lotta practice.

Let's give ourselves permission to lower our defences against being none productive for once. I can compare this feeling to being in classroom and someone informs your teacher is absent for the day. Oh that joy!

There are no life changing benefits to this. There is no research on how our productivity is improved by scheduling a “do nothing” time.

There is no result to aim for but it would help us acknowledge the randomness and relax us a bit if not anything else.

All we need is ourselves and letting us to just be.