Let me talk about two things that happened yesterday which I will classify as ‘Most Important Moments’.
Most Important Moment Number #1 was when I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee and doing absolutely nothing. My phone was lost somewhere in a random coat pocket, or possibly in my bedroom. My book wasn’t in its usual place on the table. The boys weren’t home, and my laptop was sleeping in my bag. For a few moments, I let myself sit and do absolutely nothing. Most unusual.
Most Important Moment Number #2 was when I went out for a walk. I didn’t listen to a podcast, and I didn’t send messages to my friends sleeping in time zones the opposite to mine. I didn’t try to think about Important Things. I just walked and let my brain noodle. I chatted to the birds.
It’s curious how we’ve become wired to “maximize every moment” and in the process turned ourselves into information-consuming machines. We use “daydreaming” as an insult and treat being “off with the fairies” as a dysfunctional state (though honestly, who wouldn’t choose that if they could?).
But we need nothingness for the everythingness of our brain to do its job. It’s in the white-space times- the soft focus, gentle intention times- that the wash of our thoughtscapes rolls over all we’ve learned, creating new connections and understandings from what we already know, and what, in the future, we might want to say.
We are equal parts solid and spacious. We need those pockets of wistfulness, the seeming emptiness, the daydreaming states, to allow new ideas and possibilities to find us.
The dreaming and the fairies, it turns out, are essential states of being
