Slowing down and everyday life
The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
I had come home with a few small stitches in my back. For a few days, I needed to avoid lifting anything heavy, move less and take things a little more slowly. Then the stitches would heal, and I would carry on…
I had come home with a few small stitches in my back. For a few days, I needed to avoid lifting anything heavy, move less and take things a little more slowly. Then the stitches would heal, and I would carry on where I had left off.
When I got home from the hospital, I wanted to lie down for a while and let the tiredness settle. The quiet of my home and the feeling of leaving the hospital behind did me good. After the corridors, waiting and bustle of a few hours earlier, there is something comforting about the familiar shape of home. As if the world outside has turned its volume down a little.
I rested with my tea. I had stepped out of the everyday rush; I was not trying to get anywhere or thinking about the next task. At first, this unfamiliar state felt a little strange. Daily life rarely left room for such small pauses. Then I began to enjoy it. I stayed that way a little longer, then chose a film: Eat, Pray, Love.
As Julia Roberts's story unfolded, my mind visited a few stopping places in my own life. So much had happened. Some periods had been genuinely difficult. In some, I had stood stronger than I ever expected. Others make me think now, ‘I spent so much energy worrying about that, too.’
As time passes, you realise that you carry not only what has happened, but also what might happen.
Will something happen?
What if it does?
What if it does not go the way I imagine?
We make room today even for possibilities that do not yet exist. Then we carry their weight ourselves.
I thought about the periods when anxiety had been more dominant. I had spent much of my strength thinking about things that had not happened yet.
Once I noticed this, I understood better why I had been so tired in the past. What I had lived through had worn me out, but so had everything I had carried in my mind before it arrived.
As the film went on, a phrase came up:
‘The sweetness of doing nothing.’
The phrase stayed with me. That evening, I understood a little of what it meant. Usually, even while doing one thing, my mind is somewhere else. I look at my phone while drinking tea and think about tomorrow while watching a film. This time, the tea was in front of me, the film was on the screen, and I had settled somewhere between the two.
After a while, I stopped wondering what time it was. I did not reach for my phone. I did not think about what I would do when the film ended. For the first time in a long while, I seemed to notice that the moment I was in was asking nothing more of me.
For a few hours, I had stepped out of my to-do list. The world had paid no attention. No unfinished task came chasing after me.
Healing is a little like that, too. You take care for a while and give yourself time. The days pass. Then, without noticing, you return to your familiar movements. One morning the stitches have healed. You pick up the daily rush where you left off.
But for those few days, you have allowed life to ask a little less of you.
Not giving up on life, but giving up the effort to keep pace with every moment. Sometimes walking, sometimes stopping, and letting some evenings simply be evenings.
While the small stitches in my back healed, I remembered that I did not have to think of everything. I did not have to live every possibility in advance. Some things would explain themselves when their time came.
The film was almost over. Evening had long since arrived outside. I sat a little longer. With nowhere I needed to get to.
And somehow, for the first time in a long while, that felt like enough.