CFC Blog #192: We’re All In The Crisis Of Nothing
Rob's piece brings me peace for many different reasons. But his mentioning of the open vs. closed mind really resonates in that it mirrors a concept presented in Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul about transcending the "tendency to close". It emphasizes that when you have an open mind, you will be free to experience the joy and expansiveness that exists inside. I definitely believe in taking some time during this crisis to re-center my consciousness and let energy flow in a less structured way that benefits my own productivity and well-being, in whatever form that may take. Thank you, Rob.
- Amanda
We’re All In The Crisis Of Nothing
We’ve all been through moments in life when a crisis disrupts the patterns of how we spend our time. For me, it might be something as small as missing a flight, which forces me to spend the entire day reconfiguring travel arrangements. For others it might be caring for a child with a broken arm, or dealing with a work issue that upends an entire week.
Or, as the case is now, the crisis might be as shared and massive as a global pandemic. It appears to have forced almost half the planet to reconfigure their time to do…. Well….. nothing. Just sit. Nothing.
There’s this internet meme going around that reflects this view. It goes something like this: “If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill, your side hustle started, or more knowledge, you didn’t lack time, you lacked discipline.”
That’s a ridiculous statement of course – and a relic of the guilt-trip “hustle culture” that’s built up over the last 10 years. While there appears at the surface to be a lot of “nothing” to do, and people’s schedules appear to be clean, I find that’s not at all true.
So many of us have been thrust into spending days reconfiguring a business. Some are trying to navigate the world as a furloughed or laid-off employee. Others are working, yet spending their nonworking time keeping themselves and their families together and safe. And plenty are juggling a variety of tasks while trying to educate and entertain their children.
However, what I have also noticed is that it’s a trap – one that’s easy to fall into during a crisis – to think that we must optimize every minute of our day. We somehow feel that if we’re not working, we should be doing something else productive – becoming better-educated about the crisis, shopping for food, sanitizing our homes, or rebuilding our business plans. We think if we constantly stay productive, we’ll find more creative, safe, and successful ways to make it through. If we just stay busy, we can’t fail.
So, perhaps, there IS a case to be made for finding some time to DO nothing, even if it’s only to help find creative solutions to the challenges we face.
One of the great joys of my life was to be able to sit down and study for some time with the wonderful actor and comedian John Cleese, who is also a scholar on the topic of creativity. In his work he often talks about how creativity isn’t a talent, it’s a way of operating. What distinguishes those who are seen as truly creative from the rest of us is not what they produce, but the operating model they’ve given themselves to produce it.
John (he said I could call him John) speaks of the open and closed mind. The closed mind may be purposeful (and sometimes stressed and manic), he says, but it’s not creative.
In contrast, the open mind is relaxed and expansive. He likens it to a child at play. That’s where creativity really happens.
There are right and wrong times for both. As John notes, the moment when you are attacking a machine-gun post is not when you should be pausing to explore the humorous side of what you’re trying to do.
If you want creativity, you need to make time for it.
In this shared, mass crisis, I’m trying to make play an essential part of my day – now, as well as when we make it out of this crisis of nothing. Even when my stress levels are high, I want to spend some time playing – with no regard to output, purpose, rules, or constraints other than to let my mind and/or body wander like a child on a playground. You might call it meditation, prayer, relaxation or, yeah, simply playing. The critical thing is that I’m doing…. in a word: Nothing.
It’s so easy to focus on activities we believe are urgent, rather than focusing on important things that aren’t urgent. But I’m learning that in this crisis of nothing, making time for nothing may be one of the most productive things I can do.