The idle mind

I don’t buy into the idle mind is the devil’s workshop line of thought. An idle mind is life’s moment of recharging. You just have to find a space to get idle.

In our world today we are too busy, too squeezed and too scheduled. A few years back I attended a workshop run by the church I attend called “Margins”. There were a series of short films and a book about how our lives have had so much meaningful time stripped away from us in the past four decades.

The argument went something like this. We have lost that mandatory day off as we moved toward a truly secular society. (Don’t get me wrong the secular thing doesn’t bother me, the lack of day where we were forced to do nothing meaningful does. Back when I was young there were blue laws that closed everything on Sunday. In addition social pressure virtually required we do nothing.

Where I grew up only drugstores were allowed to be open upon Sundays. Nobody scheduled functions on Sundays, not soccer games, not hockey games, not committee meetings for social and civic groups. So that day of downtime, that day of maybe feasting at a relative’s house let our minds decompress. That one day of nothing is gone and instead it is packed with kids’ sporting events and other activities like the shopping you don’t have time to get done during the week.

Also convenience devices like smart phones demand far more time that you actually realize. The boundaries between work and life outside of work have also blurred. (A show of hands, how many out there finish up those reports on your home computer at 11:30 at night?) There are inherent pressures to put in 50+ hours weeks and get paid for forty. The author asked how many people work during almost the entirety of the lunch hour without leaving there desk except to retrieve the sandwich or Lean Cuisine from the break room. I know I do.

As it stands now at home we have less time to do anything and we are exhausted. But with computers and with TVs that cover an entire wall we have so much more of our time pulled away.

In days of yore life followed a natural cycle and a social cycle that gave rest. In addition to the mandatory Sunday off the seasons dictated when we rested. When it was dark business drew to a close, almost all business. You worked longer in summer and a whole bunch less in winter.

I try to reclaim some of the margin by mediation. Sometimes I try to do it in other ways.

In spaces where I am not meditating I just have to let my mind go and throw off this yoke of overscheduled meaningless bullshit. The picture above is representative of what I am talking about.

Sometimes I just have to stare at a series of cracks in a black top parking lot and let my mind be lost in their incidental and accidental design and patterning. Sometimes I stare for minutes just tracing the lines. My focus might be on the poorly painting handrails on the loading dock out behind my office. I can get lost on where their shadows fall and while mentally astray not think about a damn thing.

It is kind of Zen isn’t it? No grocery lists, no to dos list, just an idle mind in neutral. And you know what, I usually feel better after I get lost for a time.