Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!

On simplicity, non-doing, and the joys of being temporarily useless.

Hey Friends,

Today’s the day that we practice together on the Zooms! If you’ve already registered, see you there. If you haven’t, you can still do it HERE. Details below…

Illustration by Nina Cvijovic

I'm lounging on the shores of Prince Edward County in a Muskoka chair with a selection of fizzy drinks to keep me company. Friends of mine are getting married, my partner is deep into wedding party duties, and I am free to do absolutely nothing. After weeks of racing through funding deadlines and production schedules, I arrived ready for a few days of blissful inactivity. But alas, no dice. My mind is being a productivity-obsessed little bitch.

I put away all distractions, get ready to sit in simple non-doing, and then suddenly my phone is back in my hand (who put that there?) and I'm drafting to-do lists, shopping redecoration ideas for my studio, and scrawling half-baked business plans on the back of party napkins. These are not things that need to be done right now. But every time I scratch this itch to do something, my brain gets exactly what it’s craving: the dopamine hit of feeling like a useful, productive person with important things to do.

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Earlier this month, I posed a challenge: identify a habit or mindset that causes you suffering and explore what renouncing it could look like. Welp, here’s mine: the addictive compulsion to be doing something “productive” at all freaking times.

Anxious and grasping for structure, the mind latches onto anything that can give it meaning and a clear goal to strive for. A mind-blowing idea for yet another side hustle? Must begin immediately! A new app that optimizes my morning routine? Downloading now. A book on how to be the most effective and most creative and most happy and also most fit? Must read without delay! The mind can make a compelling case for why almost anything is better than just being.

The addiction to constant doing is as old as the Industrial Age or the Protestant work ethic. In a culture that worships productivity and measures human worth in terms of output, asking ourselves to stop and "do nothing" is almost sacrilegious. Our self-esteem is so tightly bound to what we create and contribute — to our jobs, our communities, our Instagram followers — that "just being" feels uncomfortably a lot like failure. But compulsive action is not meaningful action. It wastes our energy, scatters our attention, and makes it so that we’re never fully resting and never fully effective.

Practicing simplicity is a complete paradigm shift from this. It turns up the volume on our deepest intentions and values - the inner things that get neglected when we’re tightly focused on achievement and external validation. Our culture conditions us to do (and overdo) and to define ourselves by that doing. The practice of simplicity, on the other hand, asks us to undo what is not essential and just be.

"The more we develop a taste for simplicity," says Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, "the more we come to realize that there is nothing much to grasp." We can reclaim our sense of self-worth from the rollercoaster of hustle culture and discover a stable, expansive sense of being enough, just as we are.

Non-doing isn't about giving up on action. It's about reconditioning ourselves to act with purpose, instead of being pulled around by our anxious grasping. We practice by observing, with curiosity, as the impulse to act comes up again and again. We try - if only for a little while - not to take the bait. The irony is that by becoming comfortable with not acting, we return to our tasks energized, with more clarity and more flow.

Sitting here by the lake, I pop in and out of that zone. I twiddle my toes in the water. I breathe with the rhythm of the waves. Then that annoying voice chimes in, "Don't just sit there! Do something, dumbass!" I let it pass through me like an undertow and return to just being with the clouds, the sky, the little fishies. Sometimes, it's uncomfortable to be useless. Sometimes, it's pure joy ✨

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Tonight’s Meditation Session

TIME: August 19 @ 8-9 PM EST

DEETS: Tonight we’ll experiment with simplicity and non-doing. We’ll watch lovingly as our minds protest and wriggle and we’ll rest like conscious blobs with absolutely nothing better to do.

COST: This session is open to errybody. Please consider paying what you can within your means.

REGISTER HERE ✨

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See you tonight :)

❤️ Tasha