The sit-and-stare

This afternoon I had a nice sit-and-stare. That’s where I sit on my couch and stare out my window. No music. Just staring. A snack or a drink might be involved, but not always. I try to just look out the window and let that be enough for me. It helps that I have an expansive view these days. Still, I would try to get in a good sit-and-stare once in a while even when I lived in a place that looked onto a boring neighborhood street.

I think the sit-and-stare is something people don’t do enough of—not adults, anyway, and not in this culture. We feel pretty uncomfortable when we’re not distracting ourselves with work, entertainment, or socializing. We grow older and forget the art of daydreaming. An extended period of unproductive observation of the world makes us feel either bored or guilty.

I know we feel this way because it’s exactly how I felt this afternoon. I hadn’t done a proper sit-and-stare for a while, and if I go too long without doing one I forget that it’s actually a good thing. I didn’t really plan my sit-and-stare this afternoon so much as I just let it happen. I was at a loss for what to do next. I had taken care of the chores and preparations for the coming work week, I had gone for an hour-long bike ride, I had read a bit of my book, I had checked my email, I didn’t care to try getting together with anyone, I was fed, watered, tea-ed, bathed, and otherwise satisfied in my immediate physiological needs.

So I sat down feeling anxious about finding something more to occupy myself with. The standard 21st-century solution to this problem is to spend some time mindlessly clicking through garbage on the internet. I can’t claim I never employ this solution, but I’m happy with myself whenever I manage to avoid it. To do so I have to do like recovering addicts  when they remind themselves that, no, that hit of dope ain’t gonna make me feel good, it’s gonna make me feel bad. I just have to remind myself that there isn’t a fucking thing on that internet that I truly want to look at right now.

I managed to avoid the distraction this time and sit in my nothingness. For the first few minutes I felt restless, but then I started actually paying attention to what was outside my window. I was reassured in my indolence by the sight of two gulls on the chimney of a house across the street. They were doing exactly what I was doing—sitting and staring. They were hunkered down against the wind and cold, but they looked unbothered to be doing anything other than exactly what they were doing at that very moment.

I could only assume they had taken care of the major gull business of the day. Any necessary food-finding, nest-building, and crow-fighting were out of the way, so they were free to just be. They didn’t engage in any bird small talk, and they didn’t seem to notice the lack of entertainment. 

Animals are better than humans at the sit-and-stare. They don’t trouble themselves with “keeping busy” when it isn’t necessary. It’s an admirable quality. I understand that some human cultures do a better job of following the animal example. I’ve read accounts of Westerners living with indigenous tribespeople and being frustrated by the way the tribespeople would “pay visits”: they’d sit silently in their host’s house (maybe smoking, maybe sipping tea) for 45 minutes, then say, “Well, we must go,” and walk out the door. Somewhere in Western civilization a screw came loose that prevents us from being so comfortable in our elemental nature like that.

I don’t know what I really get out of the sit-and-stare. I suppose one thing, almost involuntarily, is ideas—but not useful ideas like the kind you can get money off of, only useless ideas like the kind that generate blog posts. There’s something good in the sit-and-stare, though. Life feels more confusing when I don’t put forth the effort to do nothing. 

A bit of nothing reconnects me (in a not at all cool or sexy way) with a certain animal part of myself. And if something can get me closer to being like an animal—doin my business and not givin a fuck—I’ll take it.