We have come to live in a world where we are constantly reminded about time and being productive. This has brought us to the point where we become anxious when there is nothing to do. As a result, we try to find even the most trivial things to keep us preoccupied and constantly “busy”.
What we do not realise, however, is that we become so preoccupied with the external world and distracted from ourselves. We become obsessively concerned about our external living conditions and pay little attention, if none, to looking within. This is by no means meant to portray paying attention to our external living conditions as less important but to emphasise on the importance of striking a balance.

Sadhguru, one of the world-renowned Indian spiritual gurus, in one of his usual questions and answer sessions said that the best time of his life is when he is doing nothing. Now, this is a man who runs the Isha Foundation which even has over nine million volunteers around the world. This clearly shows how an enormous responsibility he has running such an entity but one thing he looks forward to and enjoys the most is reserving time to do nothing.

I bet you are sitting there wondering too how it is possible that such a successful person values doing nothing more than being busy. What would make you wonder is the fact that his perspective is contrary to popular belief – that one must always be doing something and just sitting there, especially alone, is laziness and a waste of time. And just to think of it, especially from his perspective, we may have been so busy, up and down so much with this and that, trying to find peace and happiness yet we have not even seen a glimpse or taste a piece of any of the two – other than trying to portray what we have.

Should that not be a good reason enough to take some time-out, relax, review and re-evaluate? I mean we have been so good at monitoring and evaluating our businesses and projects and seen great growth, so do we not think the same transformation and growth can happen if we employ it in our personal lives, especially inwardly?

If you don’t mind, I would like to challenge you and I as we face this long weekend to take time out to do nothing. Let’s switch our phones off (or at least keep them on mute and at bay), switch off the television put away the newspaper and everything else and do nothing even just for two hours.  

I know that is just a mere suggestion as this may already sound impossible to many but it speaks volume on just how much touch we may have lost with ourselves and being in the present moment. It may as well just reveal to us that besides our fears of failure, suffering and death, one other unrecognized fear we face every day is facing ourselves and hence the need to constantly keep ourselves busy with news, entertainment and enjoyment to avoid any chance of enjoying our own company.

As I always say and I know it may start to sound like a broken record, it is 2020 and it is the year of not only questioning and introspection but also of thinking and doing things we may have never done in order to enhance our life experience - And eventually improve our mental health by embarking on transcending to our next level of consciousness. So let us sit back, relax and meditate.

• Oshimwenyo is published every Friday in the New Era newspaper with contributions from Karlos Naimwhaka.