{"id":46580,"date":"2022-04-23T09:01:06","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T09:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=46580"},"modified":"2022-04-23T09:01:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T09:01:09","slug":"trying-to-do-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/04\/23\/trying-to-do-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to do nothing."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sit still.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sit absolutely still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noting at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does it work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you stop your heart from beating, can you quiet the mind, completely, and can you refrain from having bodily sensations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are doing nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there\u2019s an itch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You try to ignore it but that means doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your knee hurts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You try not to feel it, but that takes effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a bird is birding outside your window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are trying very hard to do nothing, but the trying itself is doing something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You try to stop, to freeze the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you sit as still and as quiet and as motionless as possible, with all the ambition in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except trying hard to do nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And nothing really stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing really changes, and everything changes anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an itch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a beating heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s the knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s birding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s the thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And anohter one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘I am doing nothing.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can\u2019t stop the doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t stop the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t stop the being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything is alive, changing, doing, being, birding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s nothing you can do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are being, motion, change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if that wasn\u2019t a problem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @xusanfeng, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sit still. Sit absolutely still. Do nothing. Noting at all. What happens? Does it work? Can you stop your heart from beating, can you quiet the mind, completely, and can you refrain from having bodily sensations? You are doing nothing. Now there\u2019s an itch. You try to ignore it but that means doing. Your knee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,116,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46582,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46580\/revisions\/46582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}