Go on – do nothing!

The holidays season is nearly upon us. So, for my editorial, a little word in praise of doing nothing.
We live in such a busy, frantic, crowded world. Life is ever more pressured. Everyone seems to be expecting instant response and instant gratification. A recent survey reported that on average most of us get two hours less sleep per night than we would have done thirty years ago. Most of us are also working longer and longer hours. I'm writing this at midnight!

So here's hoping you will have some time off this summer, and I do sincerely hope you are able to waste some of it: that you spend it doing that rare and beautiful thing –nothing.

In support of my case I quote a wise and venerable source: 'What I like doing best,' said Christopher Robin, 'is Nothing.
'How do you do nothing?’ asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.

'Well, it's when people callout at you just as you’re going off to do it, ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say ‘Oh nothing,’ and then you go and do it.' 

'Oh I see,' said Pooh. 'It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.'
This seems to me to be a very good way of spending time. In fact I think the world would be wiser and happier if we spent more time listening to the things we cannot hear and therefore coming closer to the things we cannot see. For ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen (Hebrews 11: 1)’. Or as C.S. Lewis put it: ‘Heaven is much too serious a place for work. It will be all dance and play there.’

Often God can best be found in the silences between the notes; in what is written between the lines: not through our effort, or hard work, or even our goodness, but in those moments of forgetfulness, of sleeping and dreaming, when we are suddenly caught unawares by the wild and mysterious beauty of the world.

So switch off the TV; put this paper down for a minute; shut your eyes; breathe deeply; dream; do nothing but listen to the things you can't hear. Nurture your inner slob. You might even find you begin to pray – not saying a lot of stuff to God, but enjoying the intimacy of God’s presence and the fragile beauty of each passing moment. Or put it another way: don't just do something, sit there!