Nothing in Small Doses

I love camping. While it has its downsides, one of the perks of living in Southern California is that we can get out into the wilderness pretty much any time of year and find a spot where it’s not too cold (and yes, it does get cold here, too). What’s even better is that we don’t go alone. There’s a group of families from our daughters’ school that go together, so there’s instant play-dates and a lot of laughs around the campfire. That’s the fun stuff. But one of my favorite things about camping is the difficult part. I love camping because it’s uncomfortable. 

This discomfort is not because you’re away from your comfy mattress, or because you can’t shower, it’s not the bugs or the cold. It’s because after you get your camp set up, there is nothing to do. Especially when you’re lucky as we were last weekend that on this particular campground, there was no cell signal. The withdrawal among all the adults is palpable; you can see everyone sort of stumbling around after holding their phone up in the air in a few places and realizing, ‘Well, guess I’m not going to be checking my email the next few days.’  

For our kids - mostly small kids in this group - it’s easy. From the moment we open the door, our little one is in play mode. There’s nothing quite like a built-in 3-day play date with all your friends with everyone’s parents ‘over there’ not bothering anybody. And as a Waldorf community, our kids aren’t addicted to the screen (unlike us parents). 

In my experience — nothing— is the most difficult thing to do. When you stop distracting yourself, for even a few minutes, you are thrown back to yourself. You are confronted by the wildness of your mind. Stay a little longer and you start to feel the emotions that are underneath. Not the passing moods and feelings of the day but the structural emotions, the anxieties, and fears, the stuck patterns that were imprinted in you by your parents and your early childhood experiences, by your culture, by the challenges, and, in far more people than I’d ever imagined, genuine trauma. 

Back in my 20’s I’d started a meditation practice, which turned into weekend and then longer silent retreats. These were formative experiences for me and while I could still do things like that today, with the practicalities of running a small business and wanting to be home with my family, I look for ways to find my ‘nothing’ in smaller doses. I’ve accumulated a series of practices — not exactly meditation in the classic sense but practices that we could call ‘meditation-adjacent’.

I stand quietly, gazing at the sunrise in the morning …

I sit quietly and try to calm my mind in the cold plunge...

I follow my breathing with my awareness while I’m in the car instead of listening to music (not always; I’m not a monster!).

These and a half dozen other little rituals are how I try to find small doses of nothing throughout my day. It’s not the same as sitting quietly for extended periods, because it isn’t nearly as triggering and, therefore, not nearly as beneficial, but those bits of nothing are still something 🙂 

As the dust settles from the election, regardless of who you voted for, you’ve probably already realized that it took on an outsized piece of real estate in your mind, in your conversations, and in your assumptions of what is going to happen in the future. There’s also a very common feeling of a kind of withdrawal, notwithstanding the media’s attempt to make every new announcement a world-shattering event that you must tune in for and have a strong for or against opinion on. That will never change. 

There will always be the next thing to draw your attention. There will be ever more content to take in. There will be something out there in the future to worry about. There will be something back there in your past that you regret. With everything I’ve tried over the last 30 years, there is no greater medicine to burn it all away and, in so doing, to find your true self than the conscious practice of nothing at all.

If you live someplace warm, or you enjoy winter camping (yes, that’s a thing), I encourage you to find a few days in the next while and get out there. Yes, getting everything organized is a pain. You might have to drive a while. You might have to do some research on where to go. But the one thing you don’t have to worry about is what you’re going to do when you get there.

Once you get there, nothing comes easy.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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