Doing Nothing

Image credit: Photo by monkeyc.net on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

One summer day, when I was eighteen, I was lying outside in the sun, eyes closed, just (supposedly) relaxing. But I could feel every tense muscle in my body. I could feel my mind racing, uneasy with the stillness. What was I doing just lying there? Shouldn't I be doing something? The fact that I couldn't think of anything else I ought to be doing right then wasn't comforting. I felt tense at the thought that I'd forgotten something.

It became harder for me, the more time went on, to do nothing. I'd try to sit still and find myself nervous about all that I wasn't doing. Or I'd know I needed a break to rest or eat, but I'd want to finish what I was doing. It made me anxious to have a task out there uncompleted.

Yesterday, I sat down to write and found that I couldn't think of a thing today. As I sat there, tense, trying to force an idea to come, it occurred to me (after years of work at trying to pay attention to these things as they happen) that I was tired, and that rather than forging on, I should take a nap and try again later. And that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Yet today my stomach is growling (Did you hear that just now? That was loud!) because I'm afraid that if I stop this writing and leave my room to eat something will happen to keep me from finishing.

In recovery, I'm learning the lesson that taking care of myself by getting adequate and timely rest, food or relaxation is not "doing nothing" but very much doing something. Yet it's still a hard lesson to put into practice.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.