Starting now: Idle a while

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, January 18, 2024

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” Sydney J. Harris

The summer after college graduation, I moved to New York from the family home in the Northwest to start a new life. I decided to go via Canadian Pacific Railway, coach class, which turned out to be a six-night adventure — or ordeal, depending on your point of view. It was dirt cheap, and cheap was key.  But without a bed? A restless-leg-inducing marathon. 

It was so long and through so much unfamiliar and changing territory, that it felt as though I’d lived an entire lifetime by the end of it. Mainly, though, there was an enormous amount of time spent looking out of windows, something we were practiced in, back then, but that now has become truly a relic of earlier days. 

Before the digital age, there was no choice but to gaze out of windows in cars or buses; and it was obvious that a park bench was not a place to stare at a phone. Even millennials, those who remember a childhood without smartphones, talk about such things with nostalgia now, sensing this vortex we’ve pitched ourselves into, as well as the difficulties inherent in trying to back out.

Today, unless one is on vacation — watching snow fall or waves break on a beach — staring idly is not done much at all. Most children would see it as painfully boring. But so would many adults!  On flights, for example, the window-seaters all pull the blinds down before the plane has even pierced through the clouds, which, for me, is a command performance moment of mindless gazing. I feel like shouting at them, “We’re going through the clouds, people! Please!”

You’ve heard and read it a thousand times, about our culture prioritizing productivity and obsessing with full-up days. We rarely take breaks between activities and we multi-task. Even if we grew up without them, our devices have won us over and we stare at them for hours on end. That’s why “digital detox” programs and destination vacations now exist. It’s why coaches are hired to help bosses, employees and whole corporate staffs learn how to feel whole again, to disengage from a constant need for instantaneous connection to everyone else in the world at all times.  

Think about what happens when we have open space in our day: often we fill it not with a spacious feeling of the present moment but with an addendum to the list, or a distraction of some sort.  We have become what is known as “boredom intolerant,” lost and anxious when time is unstructured or free. Honestly, it feels like we are scared of “the now.” 

Recently, studies are showing what the value is not only for children being allowed to be “bored” but adults, as well. According to some neuroscientists, boredom, though it might be considered a negative emotion, can actually amp up creativity, focus, and productivity. Eventually, it helps us to engage with our environment and creates space in which the brain can rest and new ideas can burble up at will. This is the flip side of mindfulness – a float-y sort of mindlessness that also serves us – our brains and bodies — in the quest for holistic health.

Last year, after 15 months of serious health challenges,  my sister was forced , finally, to fully retire and rediscover down time, not something natural or easy for her. Eventually, she settled into doing less in general and more of what felt good. But often sickness is one of the only things that forces us to be okay with doing nothing. I note a sense of relief in an enforced break from shoulds, goals, tasks and projects. It’s what Sundays used to stand for, but not so much anymore.

The Dutch word niksen, which means doing nothing (both in a positive and negative sense), captivates us Americans because of its potential to heal, help us pause, idle, be dreamy and non-linear. It is linked to happier days and moments, and a happier life. Though the Dutch did not invent the concept of doing nothing, they have at least acknowledged its importance and have a better track record for happiness than many other cultures.

How does one recognize the importance of this art formerly known as idleness? Sometimes, in a moment of grace after a storm of stress, we can clearly feel the potential value of something and make a change. On a visceral level, niksen calls to us for the very reason that we desperately need it.

This life hack is easy to begin implementing right away, in fact. It starts with just 30 seconds worth of idling – 30 seconds in which we simply drop our shoulders, relax our eyes, breathe, and stare into space without any agenda. Fifteen seconds, for tough cases! This is one way to  begin creating micro-vacation windows in our workaday worlds.