Do Nothing

I had to steal this from Courtney's blog. It's so apropos.
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Do Nothing

This is a really hard one. It is hard because it is about cultivating a deep passivity in your emotional life - a tender calm that would probably be very detrimental to other aspects of your existence. So don't start thinking that doing nothing is about whiling away the hours sitting on your settee and eating bonbons. Doing nothing is not the same as being a lazy, useless bum. Doing nothing is about making a conscious decision to not accelerate the drama. It means not booking a flight to Morocco - because good sources have reported that there is no such thing as pain in Marrakesh - when you know you have neither the money nor the time to make this excursion. It means not calling various people in your life to threaten suicide when you know perfectly well that's not what's going to happen.

Doing nothing means calmly asking for help when you need it. Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness. It is about just sitting with your loneliness, making some effort to accept how bad you feel. It is about taking long, contemplative walks through the park, meeting girlfriends for tea and reading silly self-help books. It means checking out the horoscopes in Elle and Vogue and Marie Claire, and comparing them for common and inconsistent predictions. It is about not pursuing histrionics and hysteria, it is about knowing that only time and peace of mind will make things better.

And doing nothing is not just something you must try in the case of a broken heart. It is the operative rule with office altercations, screaming fights with your mother and unpleasant tiffs with friends and lovers. If you try to force a resolution to some situation that needs only to be left alone to diffuse, you are only going to worry a wound. In a perfect example of stuffy, sensible and unmistakably British wisdom, Dame Rose Macaulay once noted that, "It is a common delusion that you can make things better by talking about them."

So don't pick up the phone so that you can add one last word. Don't go running through the streets late at night, and ring your boyfriend's doorbell with a floral peace offering because you cannot bear the thought that he might never speak to you again. All this activity is simply unnecessary, tiresome and cloyingly manipulative.

I feel it is only right for me to confess here that learning to do nothing has pretty much saved my life. I feel a bit hypocritical telling anyone not to get drunk and drugged and disorderly, or not to go too far, because, God knows, at times that has been the story of my life. But it was exhausting and taxing and eventually enough became enough.

In the time I have wasted making matters worse, I could have easily raised six children. Without a father. Without even a nanny. So just believe me: don't do something about whatever crazy feelings are boxing in your head until you have first tried to just do nothing. You will be amazed to discover that feelings are not facts, and feelings can be trusted to go away. They always do.

taken from one of my favorite "feel better" books by Elizabeth Wurtzel...called "the secret of life" also previously published as "the bitches' rules" I found this chapter especially fitting for today ;)