Opinion | The sweetness of doing nothing
Zach Davis
Opinions Editor
@zachmdavis
I got 10 hours of sleep last night. No, really. 10 hours. I wasn’t sick or exhausted or anything like that, I just decided to get a full night of rest. It was a Friday night and instead of going out, I slathered on an entire bottle of lotion and slipped into a nice comatose-like trance under my weighted blanket.
I turned on “30 Rock” (I know I’m extremely late to the party) and fell asleep amidst my sour gummy worms. I don’t regret a thing.
Over winter break, I was optimistic about interterm. I was enrolled in a course from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. that gave me ample time to find and plan a new adventure every day. I was ecstatic about the endless possibilities. I told myself that I was going to go to the beach every weekend. I was finally going to go to that place I’ve been talking about since my freshman year. Maybe I’d actually get that disposable camera developed.
I didn’t do any of that.
Instead, I stayed home and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. All of interterm.
Well, actually, I watched Tik Tok on an endless loop for nine hours a day, but really that is nothing. Besides the occasional grocery store run or obligatory late-night Taco Bell trip, I seldom left the house. Honestly, the most excitement I had was moving from my bed to the couch. While this type of behavior can be written off as ridiculously lazy, and maybe I’m just trying to justify said laziness, I actually was able to do something I never do: nothing.
In the first two weeks of interterm, I felt guilty that I wasn’t accomplishing any of the goals I had set out to do. But then, I watched the holy grail of rom-com films, “Eat Pray Love.”
If you haven’t seen “Eat Pray Love,” I encourage you to stream it on Netflix. It’s revolutionary. White moms drinking wine everywhere agree with my opinion.
Anyway, in the film, the protagonist travels to Italy and is taught the concept of “La Dolce Far Niente,” which means “the sweetness of doing nothing.” Essentially, doing nothing is an act in-and-of itself. “La Dolce Far Niente” is all about the joys that come from quite literally doing what I did all of interterm: nothing.
After watching “Eat Pray Love,” I decided to embody this concept. For this one month, I would do nothing. No longer would I feel guilty for cancelling dinner plans for the third night in a row. No longer would I feel obligated to go and make the most of my youth. Since coming to Chapman, I’ve felt this need to live as if I’m in an indie coming-of-age film where my life is a never-ending sequence of montages.
So I tried something different. If I didn’t want to go out or if I didn’t want to get dinner I wasn’t in the mood for, I didn’t go. Spoiler alert: nothing changed. And instead, I got some much needed rest.
I watched three entire seasons of “30 Rock.” I tried cooking new meals. I slept more in the past month than I did all of fall semester. And I loved it. Doing nothing made me feel energized, refreshed and gave me the boost I needed to take on this upcoming semester.
Since this semester has started, I’ve fallen back into my pattern of sleeping five hours a night and surviving on coffee. And with all the recent controversies surrounding Chapman right now, I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. But if it does – and I pray it does – I’ll take time to do nothing. I’ll plan my day with “La Dolce Far Niente” in mind. And most importantly, I’ll come up with even more excuses to justify my laziness.