The Art Of Doing Nothing

Summary: Or The Benefit Of Being Lazy Man, the weather in the early part of this past week was insanely nice. After all the snow and below-freezing temps, having warm days with reasonably clear skies felt wonderful. I was able to walk out in the yard without having to wear a jacket, play with the dogs, chat with neighbors I’ve not seen all winter, and enjoy what passes for reasonably clean air in the middle of a Midwestern industrial city. For a moment, one afternoon, the temperature was so warm, so pleasant that, just for a moment, I considered pulling my hammock off the shelf. I didn’t because when I turned around I was hit by a cold breeze reminding me that it’s only mid-March and any hints of Spring are actually a cruel tease to remind us that we don’t live in a warmer climate where fourteen layers of clothing are seldom necessary. By Thursday it was raining. By Friday morning the temperature was back down to 41 degrees. I had to tell my 10-year-old that, sorry, you have to wear a coat to the bus stop again. She wasn’t happy. I can’t say I was, either. But ah, for that moment, I remembered what it is like to lie in that hammock, the dogs running back and forth underneath wondering why they can’t join me (there’s a 300-pound weight limit they would quickly exceed), the lingering fragrance of mosquito repellent in the air (cough, cough), my straw hat tipped down over my face, swinging gently in the breeze, pretending that I don’t hear the kids arguing over who’s cheating at whatever video game their playing. I miss those days, as brief and intermittent as they were. I also miss sitting in coffee shops and watching people come and go and when I think of sitting in coffee shops, I can’t help but remember where I started my people-watching habit, long ago in the days before 9/11 when one could sit at a gate in the airport without having to purchase a ticket and simply observe people’s habits and idiosyncrasies and personality quirks as they waited for their plane. Much of what I’ve learned about human behavior comes from those moments where, for all practical purposes, I wasn’t doing a damn thing but sitting there drinking coffee. Just sitting there, wondering why so many people were flying to Akron, or sympathizing with a parent who was sending a child off to college, or noticing that more than half the people on that flight to LA weren’t wearing shoes, just flip flops, and genuinely wondering how flight attendants managed to not bitch-slap the woman insisting, for the fifth time, that she really needed an upgrade to first class because she was afraid of sitting next to someone who “smelled foreign.” I used to kill an entire afternoon or evening sitting at the airport like that, watching people, inventing characters around them, and inevitably coming away with ideas and concepts that would fuel the next round of whatever creative project was fermenting in my brain. We’ve been told over and over, with endless articles and studies coming out almost every week, that we need to slow down, take it easy, be more mindful, and focus more on not being so focused. Not everything we do has to be about achieving the next goal, ticking off the next box on a list, or adding another bullet point to our resume. We need time to stop and do nothing, and even if we know that and think that we’re including downtime in our schedule, we’re probably not doing enough. Sit with me for a moment and let’s talk. The Laziest Man In LA In the very beginning of The Big Lebowski, the Dude is in the supermarket feeling up a quart of milk for which he will soon write a check, and the Stranger describes him as “a lazy man, and “the Dude was certainly that--quite possibly the...

The Art Of Doing Nothing

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