How to Exist

Here’s an experiment for a true daredevil.

Sit there for a three minutes, following two rules:

Don’t do anything. Be content.

By “don’t do anything,” I mean don’t move, don’t fidget, don’t indulge any thoughts or daydreams. You’re allowed to breathe, and blink.

By “be content,” I mean be completely okay with your experience of doing nothing. Don’t try to change anything, and don’t get impatient with what’s happening. Be completely okay for three minutes.

Try that now. See how long it takes before you’re dying for it to be over.

It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease. There’s such a strong urge to do something: look around the room, rehash a conversation, explore your incisors with your tongue, wiggle your toes, anything. When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.

This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else.

This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here.

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