The Art of Just Sitting There

The Addiction Antidote

“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” - Luke 12:27

Often, I think, addictions are fueled by a general sense of nervous energy, a prickly type of boredom that says, this moment is not all it could be. There is fun and pleasure to be had, and your life is just ticking away without it. FOMO. Something is not right.

I can’t just sit here.

So I fiddle around. Look for a game to play. Look at the list of unfinished (and often un-started) projects I should be working on. Check Facebook for the eighty-third time today. Start rationalizing a trip to the beer aisle. Get busy. Do something. Pack this moment with something, anything. You can’t just sit there.

I suspect this is a societal thing that, especially in the West (and now virtually everywhere), we are taught from an early age and then reinforced with constantly, through peer pressure, through parental admonition, through marketing. Get going. Grab life by the horns. Make every moment count. Be all you can be.

You can’t just sit there.

I would suggest an alternate course of action, particularly when overcoming an addiction is one of your goals, and that would be to learn to just sit there. Learn that it is okay to pull yourself off of the hamster wheel, let go of that constant, prodding need to move forward, to chase something ahead, or avoid being caught from behind.

Can you undo your indoctrination, the assembly-level instructions inscribed into your mind since your earliest days? Can you let go of the past, the future, even time itself, and be okay just sitting there?

In my experience this is the most valuable tool available to those seeking to change any compulsive, undesirable, detrimental behavior. Unchain yourself from the shackles of time yanking you back and forth, pulling you apart.

Just sit there.

When that first wave of relief and release washes over you, after freeing yourself from the flowing tide of time and need and urgency and pressure, you will realize that this may in fact be the most important thing, the most perfect thing you can be doing. Rather than feeling constricted, you may feel a spaciousness and a peace unlike anything you believed possible. The nervous energy, that prickly, hot boredom dissolve into nothingness. There is only everything, and nothing need be added.

That is the art of just sitting there. Highly recommended.

If anyone asks, just tell them you’re meditating. It sounds better.