I had a most wonderful, idle, weekend. There is something to be said for idleness and I am perfecting the art in my life. I find that too often I have so many things to do that I try to do two or three at once and I am left feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by all of it.
I need to make room for doing nothing, for sitting in quiet thought, for walking hand in hand with no real destination. Time for snuggling up and going back to sleep when my mind wants me to get up and be busy with something.
Last weekend was an excellent opportunity to do all of those things. I had no goal of entertaining myself or doing anything one might consider a leisure activity. I wanted to be idle. Upon waking Saturday morning, I promptly went back to sleep. I think I did this several times over several hours. My morning and afternoon was filled with lounging about, only to be interrupted by eating. A perfectly relaxing day.
My evening was to be spent with a friend, we met up around six and traversed the town eating little bits of food at whatever place we decided to go into. Cupcakes, cookies, truffles, smoothies, crab cakes, beer, wine, gravlax, watercress soup, whisky, a martini, more beer, 1/2 of a duck, carrot cake, beer, gin, blarney puffballs. . . . it was a lovely and leisurely food journey that was completely unplanned. We would exit a building, choose a direction and start rambling along, stopping where we pleased to consume something that sounded yummy. 6 hours of walking and eating and enjoying the day together, enjoying the fact that we had no where to be, and nothing of importance to do except to be together.
Sunday was something of a repeat. We slept until 2pm. We went out in search of food. Following this was a lot of napping and being lazy. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. The night ended with a funny movie, we passed out on the couch and eventually made it to bed.
I think there is much to be gained from knowing how to be idle. I work so hard at getting stuff done that it is hard to stop doing long enough to think a little and recharge. This world we live in demands constant action and what do we get? A great many stressed out, medicated people who buy lots of stuff to feel good. I am not willing to be one of those stressed out, medicated consumers. It is time to change.