“What do you do with yourself these days, Rich?”
The question kind of caught me off guard. And as off-guarded as I was, I responded with, “Nothing.” I almost apologized, thinking that this was a totally inappropriate answer.
Having coffee with friends, I am often asked about my days. I guess it is a conversation starter for us retired folks. My days are filled with projects and partial projects, and there are times when I just want to say I do nothing. Why is it so hard to tell someone, “I am doing nothing. Maybe tomorrow as well. And the next day?” What I sometimes feel like adding is, “You got a problem with that?”
Why the defensiveness?
Perhaps we believe we have to include a daily activity or project in order to give our self some sense of meaningful existence. More accurately, it may be to give OTHERS a sense that we have a reason for still sucking oxygen! But the truth is, in that moment of saying ‘nothing,’ I felt a real unfettered freedom, a feeling like I had just taken the deepest breath of fresh air of my day. Okay, more of the oxygen, but still…..
In my writing, painting and sketching……do I approach pen and paper, or canvas, with ‘nothing’ or with something already in mind? It is usually the latter and it’s damned difficult to do otherwise. I have had many well-meaning coaches suggest that nothing happens without there first being an intention, and in order to truly create, we first need to have some kind of ‘nothing.’ It can get very confusing for me. In that moment when I said my ‘nothing’ there still was ‘something,’ a kind of energy, a feeling perhaps, without which not much of anything might appear on my paper or canvas.
Sometimes ‘intention’ feels more like ‘reaction.’ Do I react to stuff that was gonna happen anyway and suggest to myself and others that it was an intention? I don’t know. Perhaps. So, to be as authentic about it all, I might propose that my life is totally about reacting. I react and out of that, create everything – good and bad. My evidence? Sometimes, during a moment of deeper reflection, I startle myself with how much I bring into a discussion, stuff about which I have already drawn conclusions. Most of the questions in my life have an attached answer, I’ve already voted and only allow a small bit of wiggle-room for making adjustments, so as to perpetuate my position.
If I approach my writing without intention, except to write, is there some value in that ‘nothing’ that I blurted out? I notice that the putting down of unintentional words, opens up ideas and thoughts I didn’t know I hadn’t yet voted on. It is like the words come out of the screen in front of me, or through my pen onto paper, appearing in incoherent phrases, sometimes making sense and mostly not. But I love them. I am not attached to them except out of curiosity. At those times, when asked about what I am writing, I can easily say, “Nothing.”
While dwelling on this ‘nothing,’ not as a way OUT of having to have an acceptable response, but trying to grab the energy that is sometimes created, I notice that ‘nothing’ is more of a way IN, in to something I can only describe as wonder and awe.
Okay. Maybe this post may appear to be an example of those ‘incoherent phrases’ and yet it matters to me that they have appeared on this page.
Rich