We know that big plans often go awry, that we’re terrible at predicting what makes us happy, that we can’t run away. However, the desire for a new beginning is great. Are you still looking for solutions for the new year? Here are two that are guaranteed to make your life thicker.
First: choose three activities that you will give up in the new year. You won’t chase after them anymore, no way, stop it, get the hell out of here. It’s not about biting your nails less or biting your kids less. You must give up good habits, not bad ones. Why? To make the world a better place.
For example, you say goodbye to your countless attempts to reunite with your scruffy high school friend. Because you don’t have time for everything, even for everything important. Therefore, you must learn to distinguish good deeds from the best. You may not find time for your photo collection or your widowed uncle in the new year. In turn, you can take better care of your sick friend.
The second resolution goes further: do nothing every day.
Because restless employment makes your inner inviolable. It is an escape from emptiness, from silence, from yourself, so once you’ve finished reading this column, start doing nothing. If you think you don’t have time to be bored, start with five minutes. You do five minutes every day: nothing. If you don’t like it, you can also call these five minutes of complete laziness, which are five minutes of complete freedom, meditation. But only if you promise to forget right away that there are studies proving that meditation makes you more creative, more productive, happier.
So that’s how you sit in your chair and breathe. You think nothing, you want nothing, you have nothing, you breathe. If you’re distracted by your tax return, keep breathing. When you think of the unharvested quince, which in its fullness seemed both sad and happy at the same time, keep breathing. When you are too lazy to breathe, you think: everything will be fine.
Ursula von Arx sometimes gets upset because of the laziness of others. Probably because she doesn’t have the talent for it. Von Arx writes to Bleek every second Monday.