Get cozy on your couch (I would not suggest going to your bed because then you are just bound to fall asleep), wrap yourself in a blanket, put some soft music on, and drink a cup of... whatever you like.
Read, write, do whatever you like in the meanwhile, or not do anything. Comme tu veux. The Italians have a term for this, they call it “dolce far niente”: the art of doing nothing. Nothingness is often regarded as empty, miserable, and lonely. Somehow though, at this moment, it’s very comforting to me.
Sometimes you got to lose sight of what you’ve been fixing your focus on, just to breathe and reboot. We, humans, have this mad tendency of making something out of nothing—to make a meaning out of everything just for the sake of having something that gives us a sense of ground—putting so much effort into making things count while knowing that at the end, nothing really counts. We come to the world naked and we will leave with nothing with us. That being said, the nothingness is in a very physical sense. Contribution to the world or to one’s soul is obviously important, such as learning and experiencing, then giving back to the society, to the world. We spend lots of time doing things, but not enough on thinking why we do things. No, we indeed think a lot of why we do things. Perhaps the truth is then, we do not spend enough time to figure out solid answers as to why.
“I actually really like this photo, it’s really relaxing for some reason. Not like I want to smoke and relax like him, but when you look at the photo, it just makes you think, ‘why do you have to worry about that?’ you know?” said my German friend, talking about a poster on his wall. It is of an album cover of the band Arctic Monkeys’, whose lyrics give an impression of as if the band members simply sit down and observe what goes on around them. Berlin here is my friend’s home, a city full of life. Him being a mathematics major once told me his biggest fear of becoming literally insane because all he does is maths. “I’m actually afraid that I will go crazy one day” said he. While he was pausing for a second from his studies and staring out the window, his back profile reminded me of our conversation of his fear of going crazy. It also projected to me a perspective of the “another way of thinking” that he mentioned about what requires one to do maths. Merely the picture of his back profile seems to have brought me to another world for a blink of an eye. How nice it is to be swept off the ground like that and be taken to another level of consciousness, another stage of knowledge where I get inspired through grasping an observation of others, while they have no specific intention in their action. What do I know after all? At moments like these, it feels as if making observations as such then being thrown into another dimension of thoughts, and as if nothingness—doing, chasing after, and worrying about nothing for just mere moments—are sufficient for my knowledge.
Why not pause, if affordable, a day or such to turn off your thoughts and take a break from running after whatever you are running after. You need it. Plus, you will appreciate it. Afterwards you might find that after all you do not give two shits about it, or you might see why it means so much to you.
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