In tiny news items inspiring ideas may lurk. Last week, for example, it was reported in the U.S. state of Minnesota that the wife of Gov. Jesse ("The Body") Ventura was ill and had been told by her doctor "to do nothing for a month." The nature of Ms. Ventura's illness was not disclosed, although the governor himself said that she was under stress from working two jobs. We certainly wish her a speedy recovery, but, in the meantime, we have been unable to get that magical phrase "do nothing" out of our heads. We wish our doctor would tell us to do nothing for a month. He has never told us anything remotely as sensible. We complain of fatigue; he recommends iron. We show up in his office coughing and feverish, hoping to be told to stay home in bed and have someone bring us orange juice. Never mind a month; a day would do. But he prescribes some placebo and sends us straight back to work. Clearly, the Minnesota medical profession has much to teach the world.
Let us kick back for a minute and think about that command, so brilliantly brief, so persuasively simple. What does it mean exactly? What do we suppose Ms. Ventura is doing this month? Oops, we forgot: nothing. But how does one "do" nothing? Sleep, of course, without the tyranny of the alarm clock and the workaholics' unwritten rule against napping. But that gets boring after a while. Eat and drink, yes; but those activities, too, have built-in end points. Sit around and watch television? In the daytime, especially, that is just a synonym for sleeping, and the same limitations apply.
Perhaps -- and this is doubtless what Ms. Ventura's doctor meant -- doing nothing is best interpreted as doing only those things that you enjoy and find relaxing. All kinds of activities qualify, depending on your tastes: reading, gardening, bird- watching, cooking, tooling about on the Internet, shopping, sailing, fixing broken stuff, meeting similarly idle friends (if there are any about) for a cup of coffee. The problem is, if you get even vaguely analytical about it, all these things actually count as "doing something." All are diversions, guaranteed to engage, distract and entertain. None entails the emptying of the mind that is the minimum requirement for dallying with nothingness. Even listening to music intelligently takes one's mind off the void. Doing nothing, it seems, may prove to be quite hard work.