On being still and quiet

Maybe it's the season for doing nothing

Is the need to be busy now so much a part of our modern collective obsession that we’re losing touch with nature and ourselves?

I’m rifling through the cardboard box on the chair in the living room, hastily unwrapping the icicles, and placing them in a row on the table. A week ago, I dragged our artificial tree up from the basement and set it up by the sliding glass door. I had planned to wake up early to decorate it this morning, get it over with, and move on to the tasks for the day. But I ended up sitting on the couch in the office instead, trying to set up a new Instagram page for my blog and talking about marketing ideas on the phone with my son. “I think you need to find an open mic somewhere and read your blog there,” he said. My other son in Nashville texted me earlier that morning with his own advice. “Look at some accounts you like that might be doing something similar and see what they hashtag in the caption.” 

It’s mid-afternoon and outside the sun is casting blue shadows against the snow. I grab four ornaments at a time, still with their hooks from last year, and place them haphazardly onto the tree while I run through the tasks in my mind: The winter curtains are in the dryer. We need to get groceries. I forgot to pay the Mass Pike toll bill. I still haven’t purchased the tickets for Sunday.  

Earlier this week, my cousin shared a Facebook post that read: It’s almost time to switch from your regular anxiety to your festive Christmas anxiety. I was one of the first to like it and leave a comment.

“Any interest in going for a walk with us?” says my spouse Janyce, stepping into the room by the tree, holding the dog’s leash in her hand. The tree is slightly tilted to the side and the bottom third is a dark green where the lights stopped working last year.   

“You go,” I say. “I want to get this done.” 

I read something on my phone this morning in one of my productivity newsletters that caught my attention. 

It read: 

It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.

It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working.

It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training.

“We need to buy another string of lights at CVS,” I call out from under the tree while fixing the skirt. When I lift my head up, I see that Janyce is back in the living room wearing her hat and jacket.  

“It’s looking better,” she says.  

“Speaking of the tree,” I say. “I saw this thing in a magazine. It’s just cardboard, but it has a Christmas village design and you prop it up around the base of the stand, you know, to hide that gap at the bottom.

“We’re going to need to get groceries sometime today,” says Janyce. “And I still have more work to do.”

“Maybe I can squeeze in a trip to the craft store to see if they have something like it,” I say. 

In a text to my mother earlier in the week, I mentioned that I was in the middle of putting up the tree. “Why do it at all?” she texted back. It’s a good question. And one that I’ve been thinking about as I rush through the boxes, not stopping long enough to look at the ornaments. We won’t be hosting the traditional holiday dinner this time, my sons have other plans, my parents are in Florida, and we’ll be on a cruise in a matter of days with my father-in-law and sister-in-law for the entire holiday break. But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to skip putting it up this year. 

I recently read an article by artist and writer, Jenny Odell called, “How to Do Nothing,” where she claims that because we now live in a culture that glorifies speed and efficiency and something new is always vying for our attention, it’s more important than ever to give ourselves the space and time to encounter the unfamiliar. She says that the very act of doing nothing might mean we will end up paying very close attention to things— things that may help us better understand our relationship to nature, ourselves, and our place in the world.  

I’ve been thinking about this idea since I met my best friend the other night to look at slides from her trip to Indonesia. She has made it a priority in her life to travel widely and often, not simply to be a tourist, but to fully immerse herself in the day-to-day rhythms of a place. Her goal for these trips, at least one of them anyway, is to slow down enough to discover herself and the world anew.  

Is the need to be busy now so much a part of our modern collective obsession that we’re losing touch with nature and ourselves?

Janyce and I have been feeling a sense of missing each other lately, with her working extra hours and me preoccupied with a million little things around the holidays. But what we really mean, I think, is that we miss the way we used to surprise each other. Relationship experts might say that what we both need is to do more novel things together. But I wonder about that. I think it might actually be better if we simply stopped doing so much instead. It could be that we will both learn something we least expect about each other if we decide to be still and quiet long enough to notice. In other words, if we actually “do” nothing.

I take out the last ornament and find a place for it on the tree. The house is eerily silent. Janyce has since returned home, and I’m guessing that she slipped back into the office to resume working maybe an hour ago.

“Hey Google, play John Coltrane,” I say, as I pass the windows on the way to the basement, my arms filled with empty boxes. 

“Alright, here is a playlist featuring John Coltrane,” says Google.

It’s growing dark outside, but I can still see the bird feeder pole standing in the backyard, slightly tilted like the Christmas tree. I resurrected it from where it fell down last winter. There it remained, kicked aside to lay by the house, enveloped in ferns all summer and buried under a mess of wet leaves in the fall. It’s too late in the day for any birds to come, and besides, “get birdseed at the store” was another undone item on my list. 

I put the boxes back on the chair and pause at the window just long enough to watch a few flurries of snow meandering their way down from the darkening sky. John Coltrane’s rendition of My Favorite Things is playing from the speaker and Janyce has emerged again from the office. She walks over to meet me and wraps her arms around me in a hug.

“I just can’t,” she says.

“Please tell me that means we’re bagging the grocery store.” I say, returning the hug.

“We’re bagging the grocery store.”

“You’ve been working all day on a Saturday,” I say.

“And I still have maybe a half hour to go, but never mind, I can stop right now,” she says. “What do you want to do?”

“How about nothing,” I say. “Let’s just look at the tree.”