When was the last time you spent time doing Nothing?

I have been asking this question a lot to everyone I meet now, “When was the last time you spent time doing nothing?” When I started asking this question first, I would always get responses like, oh, yesterday I read a book, or spent an afternoon swimming or something on the lines which isn’t work related. After I clarified that I was not asking what you did outside of work, they usually mentioned a hang out with friend, or spending time with family or journaling their thoughts. Still, very often I find some activity in those answers, because most of the time, we are always doing something.

Over the time, I try to explain and partially convince people that spending time doing nothing means “being”. Allowing ourselves to just be in the essence of ourselves, not doing anything. Everything that I mentioned above, is still attached to a verb, an activity – which is always done with some kind of objective in mind, or result at sight. Even if you are reading a book or journaling your thoughts, your mind is still active in pursuing tasks, completing tasks, and learning new things.

In the book “How to do Nothing”, author Jenny Odell talks a lot about the miniscule of time we accidently spend doing nothing. It is a book dedicated to exploring the outcomes of inactivity, what happens when we allow our brain to flourish with no sort of activity. It is almost an academic book, and challenges you to think about a different and wide spread perspective that is opposite to “activity” always translates into “results” or “productivity”.

One of the funny thing that I usually see in self-help books is that, these books market “doing” meditation as one of the tools to increase your brain power and resulting into more productivity. Now, at the core of it – meditation is the art of doing nothing, calming your mind to the point where no act, no thoughts exist – and you are just breathing. Now breathing is just “being”. That is one activity we do from the moment we are born till the moment we die. We all have written and read tonnes of benefits, learnings on meditation that I don’t need to call them out separately here.

In today’s world, we are valued by what we do, what we own, with whom we are connected to, what skills we have, what professional level we have – it is almost as If we have to earn our value to live. And when we are not able to establish that clearly, or are not appreciated for just who we are, without all the labels, titles and skills – we struggle to find a grounding in this world. We are always stressed about what will happen if all or some of this go away, there will be no value of yours in this world. Even relationships are becoming transactional, which fails to provide solace to people, where they are valued for just existing. We constantly find ourselves having some status. Or some sort of valuation attached to us which allows us to deserve a life or certain kind of access. Now, this with enough bad experiences and long term repetition, results into myriad of mental health issues and convinces person that unless they’re achieving something, they’re worthless.

When we talk about doing nothing, it simply means detaching any outcomes from anything. When we are able to pursue just being, and remove any sort of results or outcomes of any kind, we tell indirectly to ourselves, that it is okay to just be. Just to exist is enough. We deserve to be in this world, or to be loved just for existing.

Have you ever been jealous of a little infant? Have you ever looked at a toddler, and wondered how lucky they are – that they are just loved, and don’t have to do anything to earn that! Well, as we grow old, we need to earn money, material things to lead our lives, have a profession but we often attach these things to our value and our right to just be alive.

That is why, doing nothing sometimes, breaks that channel of doing equals to achieving equals to valuation – and allows us to truly breathe. When we do nothing, we are sending message to our inner being that no matter what happens in the outside world, whatever we are doing, earning – there is still a safe haven inside of us, which values you, which respects you and loves you. People talk about self love a lot these days, and self-love starts with allowing yourself to just exist without any kind of if’s.

Doing nothing for some time, even for 15 minutes, without any outcome, not for increasing any productivity, just accepting you- can go a long way where we finally reach to a point; where we are not measuring our value by world standards or how much we earn and own, but by how much we actually get to breathe in between these moments of busyness.