The Sacred Act of Doing Nothing

How the purposeful pauses can help us find rest and joy

Photo by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash

Whenever we meet someone new, invariably we find ourselves asking the question, “So, what kind of work do you do?” 

It’s a natural inquiry that expresses a curiosity about the other person: it helps us establish rapport with them and it usually gives us a place to start gathering information and building a relationship. Yet, in a subtle but very real way, that question of what someone does reveals who we tend to be as a people and how we view ourselves and others: by the doing.

Often (but not always) people’s daily work, their jobs and careers evolved out of something that interested them: teaching Biology or working with animals or writing novels or crunching numbers or helping others heal.

Even if we don’t all do work that flows directly out of our passions and interests, we usually come to find a good bit of our identity in the individual and collective activity we engage in—and not just our vocations but the cumulative work of our routine, the tangible fruit of our daily efforts.

Many of us live with lives revolving around our calendars. We see life in little white blocks and those blocks often have daily to-do lists that define them: a series of things we have to get done, tasks we need to perform, obligations we have to meet, small jobs we need to check off the list in order to feel the day was successful.

There’s nothing wrong with a plan or budgeting your time well or wanting to be productive. In this life, we are given finite resources of time and talents and it’s a noble, life-affirming aspiration to use those to perpetuate beauty, foster justice, and to extend compassion.

But many times, we mistake activity for productivity: getting our sense of worth from the number of endeavors we engage in. We see all movement as positive, regardless of whether that movement is actually making us healthier or more whole or more joyful. In fact, if we stop and take a step back and look at our daily lives from a distance, we might see that much of what we do is negatively impacting who we are and how we feel about life. It is the doing that is doing us damage.

Many Religious traditions value the rest, the pause, the non-activity. The idea of Sabbath is central to the Jewish and Christian faiths: the belief that a cease in doing isn’t just necessary and healthy but sacred: even modeled by God in the very act of creation. In the Bible, rest is commanded, not merely suggested.

In these religious traditions, the Sabbath was a set apart to focus on God, gratitude, and provision. I always loved the stories in the Bible of Jesus being unavailable. I picture the disciples frantically looking around saying, “Jesus you have a 2:30 healing, where are you?”

Jesus did many things and had many responsibilities and was incredibly active of course, but he also spent times in silence and solitude and in stillness. He withdrew from the crowds. He put down all that was placed upon his shoulders, he created space from everything that was pulling on him, and he attended to his own fatigue and need. When he returned to the crowds after those pauses, he was able to see them with compassion, as “harassed and helpless”. (Matt 9:35-38)

Whether we are religious or not, we can see the pauses as sacred self-care, as internal recalibration, as emotional restoration, as a way of finding peace in the middle of the chaos around us. Because in that suspending of activity we can rediscover our worth disconnected from any of what we do. We can realize our inherent value. In the temporary stillness we can be reminded of our smallness and the vastness of the Love that holds us all.

I heard someone talking about trumpet player Miles Davis recently, and as you often hear people talk about musicians the person said, “As much as his gift was about the notes he played, it was about the notes he didn’t play, about the spaces between the notes: the pauses, the rests, the silences.”

That’s a beautiful way to think about the daily music of our lives: that we are defined and redefined as much by the practicing of our pauses as we are by the things that we do between them.

The rests are always more important than we give them credit for. In times of stress of indecision or uncertainty, often we can gain so much by not plowing though, not sustaining activity, not keeping up the frenetic pace. In those moments when life is spinning out of control, intentionally pausing helps us to subtract the urgency that can obscure the truly important and allow the problem to be right-sized. It can usually bring clarity that we won’t find from doing more and working harder.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes: We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, "Don't just sit there, do something." But doing more things may make the situation worse. So, you should say, "Don't just do something, sit there." Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there.”

Right now, perhaps the most important thing you can do for your health and for the world that needs you—is nothing. 

We are inundated with requests and needs and solicitations. Now more than ever we need to withdraw to silence and stillness and solitude and disappear for a bit. Doing so isn’t a betrayal of our work or our activism or the people in our path, but a way of preparing us to be fully present to it all. In those times when we pull away from the crowd (if we can) our minds are renewed and our reserves replenished, and when we return to the world we are better able to offer our full, undivided selves.

I believe as much as activists, we should be strategic inactivists.

We should be people of the sacred pause.

Do a little nothing today.

Be encouraged.

In the comments, share the ways you are practicing the pauses or maybe what you’re realizing about the pace you’ve been on.