The Art of Doing Nothing

I spent twenty minutes this morning just watching my cat sleep in a patch of sunlight on the rug. She didn’t have a single worry about the emails piling up or the laundry waiting in the dryer. She just existed, completely surrendered to the warmth. It made me realize how rare it is for us to truly stop. We are always moving, always planning, always trying to get to the next thing. We treat rest like a reward we have to earn, rather than a natural part of being alive. But watching her, I wondered if we have it all wrong. Maybe the most important work we do is the work of simply letting go for a while. When was the last time you let yourself be still without feeling like you were wasting time? Is it possible that we find ourselves most clearly when we stop trying to be anything at all?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this exact feeling of surrender in his beautiful image titled Nap. It reminds me that sometimes the most profound thing you can do is just close your eyes and listen to the world. Does this scene make you want to find your own quiet corner today?