It seems like even when you're by yourself, you're not really by yourself. When I'm alone, my cell phone is buzzing with eager friends wanting to know if I'll be meeting them for drinks later and my computer is always on my lap while I check my Facebook, update my Twitter, and browse my favorite gossip sites. Don't get me wrong, I'm an unashamed social media junky, but I think sometimes people just need to take a moment for themselves and just be.
Recently, I stumbled across this interesting website named "Do Nothing For 2 Minutes." "Do Nothing For 2 Minutes" challenges you to do just that. Nothing! It forces you to sit in front of your computer and asks you not to touch the mouse or the keyboard. You just sit back while the program plays the sounds of soft waves and seagulls.
I waited until my lunch break at work. I settled into my desk and started the program. The first 20 seconds were a breeze. 'Please, I can do this,' I thought. At around 30 seconds, I received a text message on my cell phone. I almost reached for it, but then I remembered my goal and returned to my ever important mission. At about the one minute mark I started to get a little antsy and began doubting myself. Random thoughts starting running through my head like, 'Why am I doing this?' and 'I'm thirsty. Would it be cheating if I reached for my Coke?' and my favorite, 'I'm so bored!'
By the time the two minute mark rolled around I found myself strangely antsy and agitated. I knew I was supposed to feel relaxed, but instead I felt like I had just wasted a perfectly good two minutes doing absolutely nothing, which I guess was the point. I had to admit, I was glad it was over. Very strange reaction for someone who was longing for some downtime, don't 'cha think?
Try it out and let me know how the experience was for you! Did you feel relaxed, bored, or just indifferent?
Do Nothing For Two Minutes
ESPINA NEGRA
Solitude. Yes. Reading this blog about spending two minutes alone—I am recalled to an ongoing discussion that I’ve had with a friend. Our dialogue has been about being alone and also about solitude and leadership. My friend presented me the following quote by Feldini , which I return to every now and again for reference. I am fascinated to read your blog since it fits so well with the way my mind I working now. My friend said, “we may be calling into reality what it is we want to see.” It appears that maybe after hearing and reading so much about being alone and solitude that I must really need to respond with silence.
ReplyDelete“I cannot be somebody else. If there is anything I know, it is this.
Everyone lives in his own fantasy world, but most people don’t understand that. No one perceives the real world. Each person simply calls his private, personal fantasies the Truth. The difference is that I know I live in a fantasy world. I prefer it that way and resent anything that disturbs my vision.
I was not an only child, but I was an alone child. I had a brother I liked very much who was close in age, just a little younger, and an even younger sister, but we did not really share our lives, even though we shared our parents and our house.
To be alone is to be all yourself, because you are free to develop, not according to others’ constrictions. Being alone is a special thing, and being able to be alone is even rarer. I have always envied people who have interior resources – a freedom people say they want, but are in reality so afraid of. People are more afraid of being alone than of anything else in life. If they are left alone for even a few minutes, they look for someone, anyone, to fill the void. They are afraid of silence; the silence when you are alone with your own thoughts, with the endless interior monologue. Then, you have to like your own company very much. The advantage is you don’t have to misshape yourself to conform to other people’s ideas, or only to please.
I am fascinated by people who can have a life without fear of consequences, who can be passionate without caution, who hate, who love foolishly. I look with wonder at simple feeling and at behavior that doesn’t fear repercussions.
I have early memories which have always remained with me, though as I grow older, they grow fainter. Some of them predate my verbal memory and live in my mind only as images. I am not certain if they really happened or didn’t. Now, with the passage of time, I cannot be certain if they are my memories or if they are someone else’s memories imposed on me, as is so much of what we remember. My dreams are so real to me that years afterwards, I wonder, “Did that really happen to me, or did I dream it?” I know only that these memories have claimed me and exist as mine as long as I exist. Those who could have testified as to their veracity are no longer alive, and if they were, they probably would not remember the incidents in the same way I do, since there is no such thing as objective memory.”
Two related thoughts from Ranier Maria Rilke - check out "Letters to a Young Poet" for more of this stuff:
ReplyDelete"What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours — that is what you must be able to attain."
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"You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it."