Our fire in the living room (a refuge in cold weather)

An initial  reality check here on what I am actually saying – today Saturday in what used to be called the year of our Lord 2024 I have no formal activity. Nothing in the diary. A great gaping hole.

How can I possibly survive without any entry in my diary or a ‘to do’ list.

The brain never stops. There are programs running in the background at all times with hopefully a cessation during the night hours when we sleep. The body takes this chance to repair and re-balance itself. A brain cannot run a task if you are obsessively focusing on it.

It is a nice feeling- so enjoy it –  that no one expects anything of us and it is rather a question of what I expect from myself. These are two different matters entirely. So let’s have an explore of what it means to do nothing.

I did actually ask BING what it thought (a relative of ChatGBT) to which I got the reply:

To do nothing means to not perform any action, activity, or task. It can also mean to not respond, react, or intervene in a situation. Doing nothing can have different implications depending on the context and the intention of the person doing nothing. For example:

• Doing nothing can be a positive choice when it means taking a break, relaxing, or meditating. It can help to reduce stress, improve well-being, and increase creativity.

• Doing nothing can be a negative choice when it means avoiding responsibility, procrastinating, or ignoring a problem. It can lead to missed opportunities, wasted time, and poor outcomes.

• Doing nothing can be a neutral choice when it means being indifferent, passive, or detached. It can indicate a lack of interest, motivation, or emotion.

There are different ways to express the idea of doing nothing in English, such as:

• Idling: To spend time doing nothing or very little
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-anxious-mind/202108/anxiety-and-the-art-doing-nothing.

• Loafing: To avoid work or be lazy

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/do-nothing.

• Vegging: To relax in a way that does not require much thought or effort
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/do-nothing.

• Zoning out: To lose concentration or awareness of one’s surroundings
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/do-nothing.

If you want to learn more about the concept of doing nothing, you can check out some of the web search results I found for you:

• The Art of Doing Nothing: How to Achieve More by Working Less
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-anxious-mind/202108/anxiety-and-the-art-doing-nothing

• Why Doing Nothing Is One of the Most Important Things You Can Do
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/do-nothing

• The Benefits of Doing Nothing
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/do-nothing

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/do-nothing

I hope this helps you understand what it means to do nothing.

This algorithm takes  little countenance of consciousness which is understandable because the machine itself is not conscious and simply processes and represents people’s attitude to doing nothing.

So here is my take from the consciousness and human values point of view:

As a way of tuning myself into this topic, it is useful to contemplate what others have said

“Your few days together have been spent doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

“If I were to do nothing, I’d be guilty of complicity.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“Doing nothing can sometimes be the most effective form of action,’ Sophie remarked. ‘If you do nothing, you’ll be sending a clear message: that you’re stronger than they think you are. Not to mention a lot classier. Think about it.”
― Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians

“pretending to do something when you’re doing nothing is an art form in itself.”
― sue grafton, X

“Society eats away at my soul while my heart looks on.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“doing nothing often leads to the very best of something”
― A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh:

So there are several context sensitive meanings of today’s chosen phrase. I am not talking about apathy, or doing nothing as a dereliction of Duty I am talking about the space that you create for yourself by not feeling beholden to other people in a particular time frame.

You could see it as a miniature holiday. If I am in paid employment and I have two weeks holiday I forget about my responsibilities because I have handed it over to the entity that is called the organization that I work for. This is one of the big problems with being self-employed that you cannot take time off for being responsible for yourself. 24/7/365 your status is unchanged. The Buck stops with you.

So there are several context-sensitive meanings of today’s chosen phrase. I am not talking about apathy, or doing nothing as a dereliction of duty.  I am talking about the space that you create for yourself by not feeling beholden to other people in a particular time frame.

You could see it as a miniature holiday. If I am in paid employment and I have two weeks holiday I forget about my responsibilities because I have handed it over to the entity that is called the organization that I work for. This is one of the big problems with being self-employed that you cannot take time off for being responsible for yourself. 24/7/365 your status is unchanged. The buck stops with you.

In order to do nothing we need to reduce the level of background noise, which must be worrying about the world and the way it is going. Have to turn on the news to see the demolition of Gaza, the Psychopaths who are attending the Davos summit, be what I consider to be deliberate blindness or conflict of interest on the part of governments and that I submit is a recipe for a continual mental churn that never stops.

In a way, mental stress means that you never slow down, or perhaps never can slow down. You cannot repair a car that is driving at 60 miles an hour. It has to stop, cool down, and then you can work on it. It makes more sense to focus on what you can have some control over.

You could say the anxiety or worry you have about something can be worse than the actual consequences. This is a side effect of not being able to share your concerns on a day-to- day basis which is why single people / people living alone need a duty of self-care which means that they mix with other people on a regular basis not necessarily face to face but through electronic media (a poor second place as I have previously said).

From an existential point of view if you are looking for peace out there you are looking for a magic helper when in fact the magic helper so-called lies within. It is up to us to switch off all our necessary circuits so that our brain can revert to self healing and do all its processing work behind the scenes.

It is not selfish to focus upon ourselves and our welfare. What is wrong with having a ‘me’ day? What about substituting for the word ‘selfish’ the phrase ‘self-regard’ or even self-respect. If we were working seven days a week we would think we were being exploited and yet we exploit ourselves for not giving time off and letting the world take care of itself. You will be amazed as the sun will continue to rise and set, the birds will go on singing, plants will carry on growing, people will continue to act in self-destructive ways, others will continue to be saintly and self-sacrificing.

Jesus said that we are ‘members one of another’ and that does not mean prisoners one of another. We have our wonderful God-given free will.

Wishing things were different can be a continual inner inner refrain. The point is that things are the way they are for a reason so why not accept it? We can never see the whole picture so a modicum or realism and humility is required. Basically we have free will. You cannot have partial free will.  It can be used and abused.

Inability to trust can often be reflected in the inability to delegate, can contribute to the ‘machine of worrying’  which means that instead of doing nothing, your worry department is playing in the background. I sometimes say to people that they are ‘not running the universe but just working here’. We can best mitigate our difficulty in relaxation by seeing who we are and what the really powerful influences are and how we relate to the infinite and eternal.

For example, we fret about our carbon footprint. This is an entirely made up concept based on no science. We are nothing compared with the powers of nature. Think of the volcanoes and eruptions in Iceland. How many giga times of carbon dioxide have they released? And yet Bill Gates is talking about cutting down trees, the very entities that absorb carbon dioxide and of course give out oxygen. If anyone can explain the logic of this then I would be glad to hear from you

Our mind / brain is capable of being a huge factory of generation for a world in which we live. A physical world, rather a world of perception. For example, if other people as potential threats I will be anxious and will not be able to do nothing because I am so busy being on the alert for people who might attack me. If I see other people as human souls albeit covered by what I call ‘overcoats of protection’ dying to be released from their restrictions, and I could be the person to do it, then that means you see life in an entirely different mode.

The person who has a faith in a power greater than themselves is in a strong position because you can so to speak lie back in the arms of the universe and trust that the time we are going through now is a time of cleansing and identifying the good and the bad so that we can eventually proceed to a better future. By ‘better’ I mean where violence and war are no more and where people value each other for their individuality and their gifts.

If all that helps people to take the time off then these words will not be wasted.

After finishing this I’m going to sit in front of the fire and do nothing. As a matter of faith and trust I’m going to let go of my worry about all the bad things that are going on in the world, forgetting that due to the nature of publicity, bad news is news, and good news is ignored.

Lots of people do lots of good things every day and we could do worse than bear them in mind by our prayers. I still think that the mightiest force in the world is that of prayer though I cannot explain it logically.

On that note, spellcheck, save and publish, and off to sit by the fire. It is 14:26 on Saturday and if anything else comes up of importance I will add to it.

——- VIDEO LIBRARY——-

An open letter to all Christians by Jon Rappoport