Leaving Some Time Empty

Unfilled time is where a lot of thinking used to happen.

It is now possible to never be bored. Any gap in the day, a line, a wait, a walk, can be filled in seconds, and usually is. Look at the number of people glued to their phones while waiting for something else to happen. I fill those gaps too.

What gets lost is hard to see, because it is an absence. Unfilled time is where the mind wanders, and wandering is where a lot of thinking happens: connecting two things that had nothing to do with each other, noticing what we actually feel about something, remembering what we meant to do.

None of that happens on command. It happens in the slack. Fill every slack moment and we keep the time but lose what it was for.

The practice is small. We can leave one gap a day unfilled. Stand in the line. Walk without anything in our ears. Sit for the five minutes before the meeting and let our attention go where it goes.

It will be uncomfortable at first, and that is worth noticing. Boredom is mostly the feeling of our own attention coming back to us with nothing to hold, and it takes a little while to remember what to do with it.

This is an invitation. Let's try it once and see what shows up.