On Idleness and Quiet Moments

I don’t think I have been truly idle often, and the idea itself intrigues me.

To be idle… Is it an inability to act, or simply the absence of any desire to do something “productive”? What if true rest is not emptiness, but the mind unburdened, free from anxiety or the relentless pressure to optimise every waking moment? From childhood, we are taught to avoid idleness at all costs. We equate it with laziness, even depression. So when we feel unproductive, guilt follows closely: yet another reminder that we’re not doing enough, not being enough.

We are constantly distracted: by screens, the pull to shop, the urge to perform, to optimise. Distracted from life’s most essential invitation: to simply exist.

When someone has mistaken my irritation or disengagement for idleness, it was never that at all. Those moments came with too much. The multiplicity of desires colliding, an emotion too overwhelming to contain: anger, sadness, indecision. That isn’t idleness. It isn’t inertia. Idleness, in the truest sense, is the ultimate luxury.

To let go of task, feeling, worry, even for a moment and just be is rare.

A few years ago, a friend gifted me sessions in a sensory-deprivation tank*. I expected discomfort, worried about claustrophobia, but instead I found something else: an enveloping stillness, a peaceful hush. I felt nothing, I was both out of my body and so in tune with myself. It actually reminded me of two other similar rare experiences: floating at night in a lake, and standing alone in the desert.

In those moments, absence becomes overwhelming presence. Not a void, but a vast, quiet canvas. Idleness, when met without fear, is not void. It’s a gentle threshold to presence.

*if you are experiencing a lot of stress, grief or anything that makes you breathe a little tighter than you would like, I would 100% recommend trying this.

PS: I considered many ways to illustrate this entry, but in the end, I chose a photo of a “busy” bee I spotted on holiday: busy in its world, while I was happily doing nothing in mine.