The art of doing nothing

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

The French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, famously observed that “… all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” It’s something of a counterintuitive pronouncement – certainly, if asked to analyse where the problems in my own life come from, I would say the problem is doing too little, rather than doing too much. But if you try it for yourself, you’ll soon see that Pascal’s image of sitting quietly is hardly a picture of laziness; doing nothing, actual, literal nothing, is quite hard work!

Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that our brains are activity addicts, especially these days. We are used to constant little hits of stimulation, from conversations, text messages, snacks, or even doing chores. Going without those regular doses of endorphins for any extended period of time is genuinely uncomfortable; we experience withdrawal as if we’d given up sugar or cigarettes. However, that discomfort is something you can train yourself out of, in the same way that you can train yourself out of a sugar craving. The more serious challenge lies in that loaded word, “alone.”

Very few people like to be alone with their thoughts it seems. That’s when the difficult memories arise, the self-doubt and the over-thinking. There’s a whole subgenre of relatable memes devoted to the way our brains make us relive our most embarrassing moments as we try to fall asleep – the one time when all of us have to try and be still and do nothing. When we are by ourselves and forced into inactivity, we have no defense against anxiety and insecurity, or against the urge to brood over our resentments and nurse grudges. Funnily enough, when we are left to our own devices, we rarely opt to dwell on our happy memories or count our blessings. It’s almost as if negative, destructive patterns of thought were built into us in some way, and they are only ever waiting for a quiet moment to pounce on us. 

Although he doesn’t say it, I believe that it is this almost inevitable downward spiral that Pascal was referring to as the root of all humanity’s problems. It is the need to run from it that drives us into so many of our bad decisions. We plunge headlong into destructive relationships because we cannot bear to be alone for too long; we waste our time on mindless entertainment to shut out the painful accusations of our hearts; or we busy ourselves with endless achievement, endless hustle, the endless ‘get this bread’ culture of the ‘grindset’ because we cannot bear to slow down lest our fears catch up with us. That last mode of escape is perhaps the most toxic one in our day and age, because it is so ubiquitous and so tempting. It seems like a genuinely good thing, to work to improve oneself, and it is, to a certain extent. Giving up and dropping out of life is an equally temporary fix. But there comes a point where you have to be able to stop, and catch your breath – to stop striving to become and do nothing but simply exist for a moment.

Of course, that sounds horribly trite, and it’s very easy to say, and much harder to put into practice. Who has the time to do nothing anyway, when time is so precious? And how are we supposed to overcome those destructive little goblin thoughts that wait to prey on us at the edge of our consciousness? After all, common sense tells us that idleness is the very worst thing for intensifying negative mental habits. I’ll grant you, doing nothing is not something to be undertaken lightly. It takes humility for one thing – the humility to accept that perhaps all the tasks that we pack into our precious time aren’t quite so important as we’d like to think, or at least, not so important as becoming a mature human being. 

For another thing, it takes a great deal of courage to do nothing. The very worst parts of ourselves rise up in our quiet moments, clamouring for attention, and it takes fortitude to face them down. Some of this noise comes from our consciences, which will insist on being heard, in one way or another. It may well be that we aren’t living our lives as well as we could, and some nobler part of us is screaming in protest inside, creating great emotional upheaval. In my own experience, I have found that giving this voice a space to speak and trying to honestly follow where it led me brought me a great deal of peace, eventually. However, we need to be practical in dealing with that inner voice too – it can scream so loudly that we lose all sense of proportion and start to feel that this guilt and shame is all there is to us. And then we end up hiding from ourselves again. I have found that the trick to maintaining a balance is to seek external advice. An honest, steady friend will often judge our situations far more objectively and kindly than we would judge our own, and neatly deflate the awful things that a hypercritical conscience might tell you. 

In other words, doing nothing is in fact a skill that must be learned like any other. It takes practice and preparation, and a certain amount of perseverance. However, the rewards are the genuine self-knowledge that comes from confronting our demons, and the peace that arises from not taking ourselves too seriously.