I think we are under a kind of illusion about life. Or should I say, modern life?

It’s all about productivity
It’s all about technological advances.
It’s all about the newest and greatest.
It’s all about moving forward, progress.

And also allow me to make a blunt statement, that in the name of progress, our successes become failures.

Maybe we ought to take a minute and stop to do nothing. More than the question of what and how to do, NOW. Perhaps it is time to consider what not to do. That it maybe a good idea to do nothing than do just anything.

So many of us, come out of the mothers’ womb and from that moment, we are to take off and start running, metaphorically. We say “Life is short”.

So therefore, we are to learn to eat, pee, poop, talk, walk, run, and then to get educated, to become successful, to contribute to community and the world… as fast as possible. Meanwhile we learn parents’ and elders’ ways of living philosophy, friends’ advice, society trend, marketing information and what not. Over the years, we accumulate more and more identities and expectations.

Ah, so many things to do and accomplish.
From birth, we ought to never stop.
No matter what, we just gotta keep doing.
ALWAYS.

And so that is how humans had been for past hundreds, if not the last one or two thousands years.

As a result, we are incapable of knowing when not to do something. Or rather, we suck at doing nothing.

We spellbind ourselves into the illusion that we must be doing something.

Despite all that. I find that in life, we only need to do a few things right in life to have a decent time. That much is definitely the truth.

But instead, because we must do something always, we do a lot of things that create messes and troubles and then we spend the rest of the time fixing them. Probably making more messes and troubles because we are not very good at doing nothing.

If we are able to do nothing, there are much less things for us to set right.

In a orchestra performance, each instrument is to wait until the exact moment to come in and out. In between, it is to be silent. Unable to do exactly that, the performance is ruined.

Doing the right thing in life is the same. Knowing in your bone who you are, what to do, and what to apply at the right moment. You simply do it. And you know exactly when to act because you are not busy doing something else.

Like a beast attacking its prey. Attack at the exact right moment means there is a meal. Any slight error means nothing to eat, perhaps for days.

However, the instance for us modern people is more so where let alone all the things we must do to succeed and accomplish, we also over-dose ourselves socially, mentally, and emotionally.

It is no wonder we all seem to end up with social, mental, emotional indigestion. Well, and likely physical indigestion too :P

When we cease to do nothing, we never get the chance to be with ourselves. We never learn to live with ourselves. We never come to understand ourselves. We never give our brain and body a chance to recuperate.

And most of us don’t even sleep enough.

The situation of the world and the state of affair amongst humans are self-spoken and evident enough that such living attitude is bringing us to the verge of going estranged That is, if you think we are not already estranged.

A derived question from this topic, but nonetheless as important, is that as good as us modern people are with thinking and so fascinated by it that we even think about thinking, when and how do we stop thinking?

Because, doing nothing includes the cessation of thinking.

Some of you may find this somewhat doom and gloom?

Well, quite the opposite, the only reason and it is pointed out, and the fact that somebody (because I am not alone to observe this) can point this out, means that something can be done about it, by each of us. If you choose to.

I came across a piece of writing by an unknown author. The original is here:

I loved it and gave it my own little tweaks to convey what I frequently try to convey here.

A hero is only an ordinary human who does the right thing consistently.

Non-truth is what changes through time.
Truth is the permanent basics of reality, realized by wisdom through generations.
(if you care enough to look)
(if you care enough to be wise)

All our “tricks” have been changing for thousands of years.
The old teachings stay as the cat is let out.
What we need to pay attention to,
is here, is now
our being and us applying them.

Heroes may not always win,
but they never lose.

Happy This Year, everyone. And because it’s the beginning of the year, the topic in of everyone’s mouth is again the “new year evolution”.

Now, whether it’s that, or you simply want to make any change, or doing what you do better, or simply just being. The following should be relevant.

There is a big difference…

…from not knowing to knowing.
…from knowing to doing.
…from doing it once to doing it often.
…from doing it often to doing it all the time.

Furthermore, the degree to which you are completely “here” with the doing, or in other words, the degree of your sincereness in the moment will determine how well the result maybe.

Mind you, I am not talking about real snow. I am talking about all the DHTML snowflakes that many websites and blogs are having for the Christmas season.

Why am I cursing?

Because every time I go to one of these sites, I can see my CPUs (Core 2 T7200 2.0GHz) going from idle to 25% usage — meaning half of one CPU. Yes, I am a big geek with a CPU monitor on my desktop.

Even though modern machines have plenty of computing power to generate these effects without slowing down. But think about millions of people around the world visiting these websites, increasing CPU power consumption. What wastefulness! And they are not even pretty but distraction against the text I want to read. Let alone some people have the fake white snowflakes against white background?

Let alone the power we are already spending on lightings and shit.

Oh, what harmful nature of ignorance and unawareness, albeit unintended.

Ok, done with my rant for the day.

It had occurred to me that, all the “must” in our lives — in the sense that we HAVE TO DO — cause us to take actions that squeeze and eliminate the meaning of whatever we are doing. Or in other words, our “musts” take the purity of the original intention** out of our being and doing.

When we must be happy, we lose happiness in that we fail to continuously sustain ourselves in a happy state and suffer horribly.

When we must be rich, money loses its meaning — to be a useful tool in our life — because just about everything and all our doing become a mean to conserve, hoard, or gain money however possible… turning us into something not quite human.

When we must be successful, it’s guaranteed that you will get that empty feeling when you eventually get there.

We we must be “in a relationship”, the relationship itself loses its purity in that our attention and sincerity are no longer on the other person.

When we must donate and devote ourselves to others, charity and generosity almost seem hollow and artificial.

When we must live (as if we are not alive already), for as long as possible, we do everything and anything that squeeze the life out of ourselves and are therefore completely unhappy, unfulfilled, and miserable.

So, shall we still “must”?

**See When the Intention is Pure, the Action Follows for the idea of intention.