Doing Nothing Is Doing Something
Recently I took time off with my family to go to the beach. It was a well-deserved break after my son Miles spent a couple of months recovering from hip surgery. All the build-up of the surgery, the surgery itself, and the recovery left us spent. Of course, life didn’t stop during that time to allow us just to rest and focus on healing. It threw all kinds of other things our way, and I barely came out unscathed. So taking a “time-out” seemed like just what the doctor ordered. But a funny thing happened along the way. As unplugged and slowed down as I wanted to be, as I dreamt of being, as I longed for and desperately needed, it was hard for me to actually do it. After months and months of being “on” and having minimal downtime, my brain did not know how to handle it when I finally had an opportunity for a break. It was impossible to sleep in. It was hard to keep my brain from bee-lining to the zillion other things I needed to catch up on. It was a struggle to be present. And I’ll be honest; this kinda pissed me off. I only had a couple of days. A couple of days to get some respite and relaxation. A couple of days to spend time with my family in which every hour wasn’t accounted for and scheduled. The clock on my time-out was ticking, and I needed to turn off my mind before the buzzer dinged, and I was hurled back into “go-mode.”
Then a beautiful thing happened. My son asked me if I wanted to collect seashells with him, to which I replied, “Yes!” And a-hunting we went. Somewhere there on the beach, under the sun, with the smell of the ocean, and the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, I lost myself in the hunt. Such a simple thing, with a simple goal…just find shells. My son was thrilled every time he found a shell which in turn energized me. The quest got exciting as we overturned new types of shells we had never seen before on this beach. Tiny treasures with such exquisite detail that they almost didn’t seem real. They were beauties! To our delight, we even found a heart-shaped rock, an unexpected “rare” gem among the rest. Time was not a care as we were engrossed in the pursuit, left and right searching, tracking, comparing, collecting, noting, and examining. It was mindless, but yet my mind was occupied.
It was nothing, and yet it was everything.
It was nothing, and yet it was everything.
It was everything because it allowed me to enjoy time with my son. It permitted me to be present in that very moment. It enabled me to turn off all of my rambling thoughts, to-dos, and planning and plotting. It is often in these moments that I find my true self. I remember that my life is so much more than the hurry, the shuffle, and the race. And I am reminded that doing nothing is doing something. Something worthy.
What is this life of mine if it is not to enjoy the beauty right around me? The beauty of my husband and my children, the beauty of time spent together, the beauty of God’s creations—the sea, the sand, and those miraculous shells.
Slowing down is hard. Stillness after so much motion can be elusive. But that doesn’t mean we should give up seeking it. Because it’s often during these times we need it the most.
It left me contemplating a lot of things, such as how life is measured. Is it by output? Is it what we produce, accomplish, and check off our list? Each of us must answer this for ourselves. But I was reminded once again that in the moments when I can truly engage with another and bring them joy or find joy together, it is, to me, one of the most valuable aspects of my life. It is within these moments that I feel truly alive.
Nothingness enlivens me. Stillness awakens me. Some of my most present moments are in the calm.
There is value in doing nothing. It’s something I knew so effortlessly long ago when I was younger. It’s something most of us know as children. Then, as we get older and gain responsibilities and our time is in demand, doing nothing seems frivolous and irresponsible. Along with that comes the societal pressures, values, and messages of “do more” and “be more.” And that more, more, more can fill up every minute of every precious day.
Add in the demands of rare disease life, and it’s easy to lose sight of the value of doing nothing. Or maybe it’s not even so much of losing sight of it, as it is that, being a rare disease caregiver mandates that we never be still. Not only in our physical body from all we must complete in a day but in our minds, because nothing ever seems truly finished, and everything feels as though it can change on a dime. So unrest is all we know. Unrest is our normal.
Though doing nothing seems like a luxury not afforded to parents like us, I think I may keep it in my sights anyway because it’s worth it. Though I may not attain it as often as I like, the respite it offers my mind, body, and soul is worth the pursuit. It’s valuable. It matters. It lets me breathe. It allows space to move. I need open spaces in my life. Period. If every second of every day is filled, I don’t have any room for instinctual reactions or enlightenment.
The “nothing” is in itself, the “something” I need.
Perhaps it’s the “something” my whole family needs. What if looking at bugs with my boys in my backyard is just as important as shuffling my oldest off to sports practice or my youngest off to physical therapy? What if there is just as much value (or more) in doing these nothing types of things? Might they hold therapeutic value in their own way?
This is one I’ll have to keep considering and contemplating as I go, as life unfolds, and perhaps as I evolve. But a couple of things I do know right now from those precious few days of “nothing” are that time to “just be” is not lost on me and those shells and that heart-shaped rock weren’t the only valuable treasures I found at the beach that day.
