“I am somebody too! I feel that strength in me. Comfort, my father’s money, family, hometown, I will leave it all behind. What I am destined to conquer I do not know yet. But I know that one day I will come back, crowned with glory.” Osman Lins from “Nine, Novena”

My mother-in-law thinks I am a bum. My therapist thinks I feel very small inside. My wife thinks I have very little ambition and have “bum-ish” tendencies. My cat has been looking at me with disdain since I have been unemployed and unable to buy him the food he likes. My neighbor often asks me if I have found a job yet and appears to think that there is something suspicious about me. My father-in-law is worried about my ability to provide for his daughter in a manner that she deserves. My wife does not feel taken care of by me. My mother is worried about my ability to economically support myself and keep a roof over my head. The one thing that all of these people have in common is that they know I enjoy doing nothing. Some of them see me doing nothing almost everyday. Just last night my wife said to me that I do nothing better than anyone she knows.

I don’t think I was always this way. The enjoyment of doing nothing has grown the more I have failed at or disliked doing something. My therapist tells me that I space out a lot and when I asked my wife if she thinks I space out she told me that I “space out all the time.” I know why I space out. As a kid and teenager spacing out was a survival mechanism. My world felt so dangerous, confused, lonely and emotionally unstable that spacing out was the only place I could feel safe and secure. I fed my “space outs” with music, alcohol, weed, pornography, art, movies- anything to remove me from “the real world.” I guess I fed my ’space outs” too much because now as an adult it has grown into a full-fledged passion for doing nothing.

My enjoyment of doing nothing does not have anything to do with my Buddhist beliefs. Nor does it have anything to do with my belief that if more human beings did nothing the planet could be saved from environmental catastrophe, war, greed and depression. We would live in a peaceful world. Doing nothing is like sipping a fine wine. It is an acquired taste that has to be cultivated over the span of many years. One has to work hard to do nothing. The society in which we live trains us to always be doing something, to keep busy until we are too sick, too much in debt, too old or too dead to keep doing. Doing nothing is anti-capitalistic and  in a sense it is a revolution, a new world order. But I live in a society where everyone forgets to smell the roses and instead enjoys tripping over their feet from day-to-day. By doing nothing I realize that I am removing myself from the “human world” and instead living in another world that might be found deep inside my head or in some other dimension.

I like to smell, listen, touch and feel. I like the sound of the wind surfing across my ears or the feeling of the sun sizzling my skin. I enjoy being alive much more than I enjoy working on any one thing in particular. I prefer petting a cat to talking to a human being and I enjoy the solitude that descends over me when I take a long walk. As a lover of literature and music- I need as much time alone to indulge these passions as if they were a full-time job. Without moving a bone in my body I could happily watch the sun slowly descend from the top of sky until it hides away behind the earth. I am a lover of all things living and mysterious. By doing nothing I feel like I have much more time simply to be.

But then I realize that I do live in a human world where man cannot live on water alone (even water costs money these days). Maybe I would do something if I could find something that I enjoy as much as I enjoy doing nothing. Maybe I would take a vitamin supplement if I knew it would give me the motivation I need to do something. If I could travel back in time and wipe out all the years of my life spent in sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, struggle and abandonment maybe then I would have the energy and ambition to be somebody. But nothing gives me as much pleasure as doing nothing. I would sleep eleven hours a day if I could escape from the guilt that comes along with sleeping in everyday (I am often told that I can sleep when I am dead but I need to be alive in order to enjoy the pleasures of sleep). I would walk for the entire day, everyday with no destination in sight, if I did not have rent to pay, a desire for good food and a wife that I want to care for. My ambition is centered in doing nothing; I am motivated to do nothing because it is the only thing that feels effortless, safe and right for me. I am good at being a nothing man.

Gertrude Stein once said that a great artist needs to spend ninety percent of their time doing nothing but contemplating the mysteries of the universe. The other ten percent of time needs to be spent in hard, intensive, creative work. “No good art comes from tired and overworked artists. Neither does good art come from busy artists. Art is supposed to teach us something about ourselves and the universe in which we live. How is an artist who is too busy, overworked and tired going to know anything about themselves let alone the universe in which they live?” Gertrude Stein once said. She coached many great artists in her day like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf; so I am banking upon what she says being true.

I have been coming across the word courage a lot the past few weeks. For a long time I always thought that courage meant being brave in the face of danger. Recently courage has started to mean something very different for me. When Buddhists, Hindus or Muslims talk about courage they do not mean to be brave or take risks as much as they mean to see the truth in things as they are and have the courage to stay on your own path rather than falling away into the illusion that everyone else believes to be true. This is the heroe’s journey. Even though my mother-in-law, father-in-law, my wife, my neighbor, my mother, my cat, my therapist are all concerned about my ability to do something in this world that will earn me a decent income, some respect and the ability to be a provide for my wife and future family; I need to have courage. The courage to continue on the path that feels right for me- despite what others may think. The courage to continue to do nothing and trust that from nothing something brilliant and unforseen will grow. For now- I am going to go sit in the sun.