View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. This web edition features the views of print edition columnists Thom Barker (Wednesday) and Calvin Daniels (Saturday), as well as web exclusive content by Michaela Miller (Thursday) and Devin Wilger (Friday).
This week: Is doing nothing an appropriate use of time?
Is it possible?
This question is one of those that immediately begs a number of other questions, which I like because I can have a semantic field day with it without actually answering the question.
First of all, is it actually possible to “do nothing?” I tried it the other day, and noted that even when I am ostensibly “doing nothing,” I am thinking, observing, contemplating, seeing, breathing, hearing etc.
Even ascetics, who spend their days in quiet meditation, are seeking enlightenment, or Nirvana or God or something.
In fact, even the way the question is phrased implies that nothing is something you are doing.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Anyway, let’s assume by doing nothing we mean passive activities such as meditating or watching TV (not documentaries or news, but something mindless such as game shows or Oprah).
Is it ever appropriate? Well, now, doesn’t that just open another can of semantic worms? Appropriateness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And, of course, by eye I mean brain because the eye is actually just a gatherer of information that then gets interpreted by the brain.
The short answer to the original question is, yes, doing nothing is a good use of time. The best argument for that position is perhaps sleep. Notwithstanding the dreaming phases of sleep, which I view as a second life I lead and is definitely “doing something,” sleep is as close as we ever get to actually doing nothing and is an essential activity of living.
Ultimately, I think a case could be made that living itself is doing nothing. Living, and thereby all the activities that flow from it, become involuntary when you look at it in that light.
In that sense, doing nothing is not only an appropriate use of time, but the only appropriate use of time, because the alternative is dying, which doesn’t to anything for anybody.
But that is a semantic argument for another day.
-Thom Barker
Chillax to Recharge
As a girl who is constantly on the go, a moment to do nothing is blissful. A day to do nothing is heaven. In my 20 years of experience on this planet, I have grown up with parents that have had increasing workloads placed onto their shoulders. Both of my parents need to have full time careers just to scrape by. For the proper health of their kids, they have had to sacrifice their financial wants. In order to keep a roof over our heads, they had to say no to our superficial desires. As I continued to grow, the workload of my parents continued to grow. I have seen the effects of stress. In my high school years, I took on workloads that were far passed the mental capacities of any teen. This took its toll on my mental state and physical state. I have experienced the effects of stress. This is exactly why I think it is important to take the time to do nothing once in a while. In this demanding Western Society, it is imperative that one takes the time to chill and relax once in a while. Having your brain constantly and actively focused on tasks wears out your circuits, so to speak. Time to rest properly helps, but taking a block of time, be it 15 minutes, a day or two weeks, is also helpful to your brain. Doing nothing is healing. It can be just as healing as exercise, depending upon the type of person you are. If you work, you must also rest. The lessons in life are simple; never try to complicate life.
-Michaela Miller
Nothing painful about nothing
I have a bad back. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, but I’m pretty sure my problems began after I fell off the monkey bars as a little kid and directly onto what amounted to a concrete pad – kids these days and their rubber, bouncy play areas don’t know how good they’ve got it. I haven’t had any medical diagnosis on this, because I’m afraid they’ll find something seriously wrong that will require the involvement of needles – I have a serious needle phobia – and it’s mild enough that I can usually get by without being too bothered by it.
I have found that when it’s causing me a large amount of distress, the couch in my house is uniquely well suited to making the pain go away. It’s not a perfect couch, it’s far too low to the ground for actually sitting, but if I sit on my back and move as little as possible, it tends to make the pain subside for a while, and an evening just lying on the couch can sometimes set me up well for the next couple of days.
It’s not that I do nothing on the couch, like most modern homes it’s positioned quite near a lovely television that can display all manner of entertainment, or I can fiddle with my phone like most of today’s youth. Given that I tend to have somewhat restless hands at the best of times they’re usually employed to play video games or sketch various nonsense to keep them busy. But if I did absolutely nothing it’d be just as valuable for the main purpose of planting myself on the local couch, which is to give my back a chance to do nothing at all. While I personally can’t do absolutely nothing, I think there’s definitely value there if you’re someone who suffers from an injury, whether new and fresh or old and untreated like mine.
-Devin Wilger
Rare time to find
Doing nothing is rarely a case of actually doing nothing.
For example, often I lie awake at night doing nothing, unless being prone is something, but my mind is active, too active for sleep.
And that is the thing of those times a person just sits on the steps and watches the sunrise, or the sun set, physically it is a point of inactivity, but the human mind rarely goes to a place of quiet.
I suspect that is very much what Eastern philosophies espouse, finding a place where the human mind quiets to the point we can fully relax.
It is not easily achieved.
Often, with a pickerel jig in the water and no walleyes interested in it, I have sat in an easy chair and relaxed, to a point.
My mind does not quiet often. There is always random thoughts of what might go on the front page of the paper in a holiday-shortened week, who the culprit is in the mystery book I am reading, how a spot such as Saltcoats Regional Park would be ideal for a disc golf course, and the list goes on and on.
Doing nothing is great in the sense the body just relaxes. You are not sweating on a plus 28 days throwing discs, you are not writing yet more words for the newspaper to the tune of thousands per week, you just lean back and let muscles chill.
But to achieve that state for the mind, a point where you are just there as a part of the cosmos, an evolutionary creation amid the varied elements which have randomly come to be, relaxed, thinking of nothing, that moment of complete quiet, that is as elusive as the dragon, the sprite and the unicorn.
And that is just something else to think about.
- Calvin Daniels
