Doing nothing

I was talking with another traveller about our journey and she asked what Goa had been like. I froze for a moment as I thought about the fact we had only been to one little neighbourhood and for 10 days we hadn’t left the area once. It was hard to come up with an answer when our life had been revolving around the hotel, a single restaurant and the beach.

“Oh, so you had a little break from travelling, that’s nice!” I flashed an awkward smile as I thought to myself my life wasn’t exactly something I needed a break from. How the conversation made it sound like even travelling was work I was obligated to do and needed a vacation from. And as if life would be about being ON or OFF. When you’re ON, you’re accomplishing life, doing things you can list and explain. And when you’re OFF, you’re doing nothing, having a break from life, just a short moment of rebooting yourself like a computer. 

Again*, I find myself asking:

Am I supposed to be doing something and while I’m not doing something, am I doing nothing?

*As I thought about it and opened a page to start writing this post, I realized I had already covered the theme in another post. Work-life Balance came out in January 2023, just a little over 2 years ago. Funny how life hasn’t changed much; I’m still doing nothing.

The problem is, we don’t have vocabulary for life that doesn’t revolve around work. Either you’re working most of the time and sometimes have a vacation or you don’t have a job and you’re desperately looking for one – if not, there has to be a reasonable explanation for it or there’s something seriously wrong with you. Explaining a life style outside this ideology is impossible and tends to sound pretentious.

My life doesn’t have a structure, a routine I can explain, a calendar to prove what I did each day or a To Do list for things I’ve accomplished. All I can do is to start listing all the little moments I happen to remember for one reason or another.

I loved our time in Goa. I watched closely as the ants arrived to collect the little crumbs I had accumulated during the breakfast. I laughed as a cow tried to enter a shop and the poor owner would, as respectfully as possible, shoo the holy animal off his precious products. I watched the great red orb set to the sea… And as the list goes on, I start feeling weird. It’s like trying to list the moments strips something important away. Even the most precious moments sound like tasks I’ve just ticked off. Existence becomes a chore itself. 

But how is the rest of the world contributing? What was the sun doing as I was watching it? What were the waves for? What do the rocks bring to the table? Could I also be part of the nature and the importance of my existence as inexplicable as the universe?

As I’m doing nothing, I am like the wind; moving around seemingly with no purpose, but always affecting the atmosphere.

xx