By Tinky Ningombam
As I was sitting balled up with a shawl on my balcony, my cat majestically stretches up the ledge of the railing and looks up at the pigeons fluttering in the branches that spread across my apartment. And as she disinterestedly turns away with half closed eyes, she freezes poised there and stares into the abyss. The amount of calm and royal smugness that she displays making me question if she is my pet or I hers. For, as always, she makes me feel like I stand for her cue, to give her attention when she commands, to play fetch when she allows. And so my evening passes with blank thoughts and staring at nothing, noticing birds fly past and watching kids run in the park. And my cat and I having nothing better to do than trying to outdo each other in doing nothing.
The joy of doing nothing is a joy like no other. Don`™t you think so?
When I was a kid, we would just sit out in the sun and pluck flowers off in the garden. And just do that for hours. We used to call it exploring. It`™s a pity, children of today. Between classes, home tutors, home work and video games, I wonder if they even have time to daydream, leave alone enjoy some unscheduled pleasures. Everything with a time table, we urge, they can`™t just lie on the grass of an open playground and look at the evening stars plucking grass and kicking in the air. And it is not just them that we regiment, it is also us. We don`™t have time to lay around. So busy we have become with inconsequential things. And so devoid of free time.
We do not have the luxury of doing nothing as we used to. We cannot sit and stare in space anymore. Lest be considered mad. We have come to judge our lives by the pace that we move on to our next mission.
There is a famous Italian saying, it goes as `dolce far niente,` translated as the `sweetness of doing nothing`. Made popular by the famous movie on Elizabeth Gilbert`™s book – `Eat, Pray, Love.` This idea that there can be great bliss in mastering the art of doing nothing. No, it does not mean being idle, but in doing things impromptu, carrying out unplanned acts of leisure just for the pleasure of it. That we let in time for little contentment, that we don`™t lament time spent in small pleasures and telling it of as wasting time.
The art of doing nothing is about finding happiness in small acts of personal pleasure. This comes with letting go of the guilt of always looking for some pending task to accomplish. The only productivity that one needs to worry who follow this art being a healthy state of mind. Most of the time, we save up all our efforts for the time when we take a holiday, when we take some `alone` time away from work or home. But the simple crux of this idea is that we do not need to run away from our normal setting to be able to acknowledge and take in small pleasures. It is in the relaxation that comes with knowing that we are living in the present moment. I believe it is in bringing in our inner child whose bliss in seeing a shiny new toy is no different from seeing a feather drifting in the breeze. It is about letting in our moments of bliss throughout the day and taking out time for it like any other task.
We do experience our occasions of il dolce far niente, believe it or not. It is only unfortunate when it escapes us before we realise it. I recall one of my better mornings some years past. On the beach of the river Ganga, I woke up to the chant of an old man walking up and down the waters. All I could hear was a low hum of his old voice and the slow flapping of water as he strolled casually. As I walked out on the sands and sat down with the camera to capture the morning scenery, I felt a sense of atonement and peace beyond one`™s measure. What had started out as a task to get a photograph, became my moment of dolce far niente. And as I lie there doing nothing for the next half an hour, just staring at the slowly rising crimson sun, listening to the old man chanting and the slow babbling of the water flowing in the river, my friends join me one by one noiselessly and just sat by. For that was their moment too.