Take a moment

It’s rare that I do nothing. Well, it’s rare these days that anybody does nothing. But it’s REALLY rare for me.

To firstly clarify, I am not saying I am constantly efficient or productive, or pushing myself to my limits. Rather the opposite, in fact. What I mean is that my mind is constantly busy. Any moment I get to myself is a trigger for my brain to ring alarm bells and say ‘find something to do! Anything!’. So maybe I will uselessly scroll through my phone. Maybe I will wander to the fridge. Maybe I will find someone to see or something to do.

But why?

Why is it the case that I cannot embrace the emptiness and the freedom, every once in a while?

Running my bath earlier, I put my phone on the side, didn’t load Netflix on my laptop, or click play on Spotify, and just did nothing. Watching the candle’s flame surf the waters miniature ripples, my eyes followed where it’s light bounced from the leaf imprinted windows; casting its pattern on adjacent walls as its energy burst through the candle’s white casing. When was the last time I paid such attention? I don’t remember.

And for the first time in a long time, I exhaled and watched my stresses dance with the bath’s steam, embraced by its lavender scented fog and taken to a place that was finally not my mind. Hm, I thought. So this is what all that mindfulness stuff is about.

For a while I had forgotten to nurture my mind in the way I would nurture or obsess over my body. But the key thing I had forgotten is that our bodies and minds are bonded in the strongest of ways. I’ve learnt in the past six months that this can be a hard truth to swallow, but once learnt is the medicine to any ailment your mind can concoct.

After taking just 3-4 minutes out of everything, I didn’t feel just more relaxed but more motivated too. I wonder whether taking more of these empty moments each day will teach us to fill the busy ones with more productive and meaningful tasks.

My New Years resolution for 2019?

To set aside just 3 minutes a day to do absolutely nothing.

Merry Christmas!