I always say to budding writers, ‘The most important thing that you can do is sit around and do nothing. Because the second you start to manufacture a story, you’re going to get stressed out, and the story can’t start that way.’
– Leslye Headland, the creator of Star Wars: The Acolyte, in Entertainment
For me, this is how life is in general. I can’t sit down to manufacture decisions. If I try, I get stressed out and it doesn’t go so well. They come on their own and in their own time.
I can gather as much information as possible. I can imagine into different scenarios. Sometimes, I talk with someone about it. And when it’s time, the decisions make themselves.
Here, I am talking about it in a conventional sense. In a more real sense, everything is happening on its own and living its own life – decisions, sitting down to make them or not, gathering information, and so on.
I love Byron Katie’s suggestion to stay in bed in the morning after waking up and wait until the body gets out of bed on its own. At some point, it just happens.
Another side to this is boredom. Allowing myself to be bored. To not do anything in particular. That allows more effortless and surprising creative impulses to emerge. Something comes up on its own. I find myself getting up and doing something that needs to be done or that is nourishing to me.
Since I don’t have much of a fixed schedule these days, my days are mostly like this. At the end of the day, I make a list of things I could do the next day. It’s a kind of menu. And the next day, I wait and see what comes up. Usually, I am surprised.
Some days, like today, not too much happens. I found myself looking into and finding sources for more plants for our food forest and permaculture project in the Andes. It was not on my list, but it just happened. It felt right and there was a nice flow with two others involved in the project who were on the same wavelength at the same time. I received an SMS telling me some storage boxes I had ordered were in the store waiting for me, and I also received an SMS telling me about a sale in another store close to it. I checked, and they had some very nice pots on sale that I had wanted to get for the cabin. So I walked downtown to pick up the boxes and buy the pots.
I have a menu of options for tomorrow, and I am curious to see what will happen.
As I mentioned, I am often surprised. I am surprised by the timing, and I am surprised by what I find myself doing. Yesterday, I had planned to take a day of rest. At some point, I found myself going outside to clear out some volunteer plants growing among the berry bushes in the garden. I had not planned to do it so it was a pleasant surprise. Some days, I find myself getting up at 4 am and getting much of my list done before most people have even started their day.
In our culture, we are trained to think that we need to force ourselves to do something, otherwise it won’t happen or it won’t happen in time. That’s not my experience. When I allow myself to wait and be surprised, things get done, and it gets done not only in its own time but somehow on time otherwise too.
That’s how I write here too. I sometimes write down ideas for articles, and I have a long list. When I actually write, it’s because I am moved to do it in the moment. I cannot not do it. If I tried to follow a plan and write something I think I should write about, or I had an impulse to write about at some time in the past, it wouldn’t go very well. There would be little or no flow, it would be uncomfortable, and it would not be very enjoyable.
This is not an excuse to do nothing, to avoid responsibilities, or to not be a good steward for one’s own life. If that happens, it may be because the mind takes this and makes it into an ideology. That creates inflexibility and goes against the natural flow and impulses. This is about waiting with curiosity until a movement happens on its own.