Doing Nothing

This morning I rose at 11AM, which is typical for me on weekends. I did the usual brush and shower. After my first meal of the day, which I suppose would not exactly have been breakfast, I sat at the dining table with a cup of coffee. I felt a need to figure out what I was going to do. Meanwhile, I had begun browsing the internet and was becoming increasingly more aware of a peripheral feeling of restlessness.

Then, I noticed something. Cities in northern latitudes are, I would suggest, blessed with a southerly sun in the winter. Seattle is one of these cities and this southerly sun was shining through our living room window. People often gripe about the darkest days of the year. Nevertheless, those are the days when the sun stays low in the sky. The result is a kind of perpetual magic hour.

In that moment, I knew that the best thing to do was actually nothing. Doing anything else would have distracted me from the light coming through the window. So I set a chair in the sunlight, sat down, and did nothing.

It's funny how many things we don't notice. We don't notice how sunlight creates circular reflections in tree branches. We don't notice how emotions are layered and interdependent, not just reactions to our environment. We don't notice how we grasp at some thoughts and cower from others. When we close our eyes in the face of the sun, our vision becomes a churning field of brown, orange, and yellow hues sprayed with a sort of fine rainbow mist. Why don't we notice that more often?

Maybe we do notice these things from time to time, although fleetingly. But we can notice them in any moment, if we do nothing.