I kept hearing about meditation. And at one point I tried it. With one app that was given to me for free through my employer's benefits.

It had a counter of your current uninterrupted streak. (Meditating every day) I kept at it. First for 5 minutes a day. Soon for 10m a day. Then 20m

Then twice a day at 20m.

Then semi-guided, and in the end unguided (only a beep at the end).

I never felt anything from it. Truly. Nada. Not better, or worse or calmer or more present or really really nothing.

Yes while meditating I would catch my mind drift, I would come back to the breathing and continue the count.

After this has been on for over 6 months and my counter of my streak was nearing 200. I decided to skip a day, only to see if I would get back to it if my counter was back at 0.

Result?

I never meditated again. Could it be that did it wrong? Possibly.

Could it be that it just doesn't work on me? Possibly and this is the one explanation I'm going with

The whole thing is just...nothing

In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.

Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.

I find just going for a walk in nature, after walking for 2 hours something happens with my brain. I'm more calm, relaxed, focused, and coherent in my inner thoughts. I think it takes around 2 hours of inner monologue and thinking about all the problems I'm facing in my life until I feel like I'm done and I can let them go, or I've gone over them enough.

> and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.

I see this study cited often, and I always reject this interpretation. I'm perfectly content sitting for long periods, with or without my thoughts, but if you give me an electric toy I've never seen before, of course I'll play with it! Can I make muscles twitch? Move my arm? Are some parts more sensitive/conductive? What happens at the limits?

For me, the pain would be the cost of playing with a new toy that gives me novel sensations. I would do it even if I had other, less painful activities available. It's not necessarily a way to avoid boredom or whatever else the common interpretation claims.

As the Buddhist joke goes 'don't just do something, stand there'.

Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”

One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.

One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?

EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?

I got really into meditation a few years ago. At the height of my practice, I was doing 1-2 hours per day, and I did one 7-day retreat.

Since then, two things happened. One is that I completely lost interest in meditation. The second is that I feel I've become a lot better at emotional regulation and self-awareness. It's hard to tell whether meditation actually played a role in this, or whether it was other things I was doing, or just a natural consequence of aging and accumulated experience.

Now my thoughts on meditation are that it's probably moderately beneficial, especially for someone like me prone to anxiety and depression and lacking in healthy lifestyle habits. But I'm skeptical of claims that it has unique benefits when compared to any other focused, rigorous activity like physical training, serious reading and writing, or playing a musical instrument. Or for that matter, eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep.

I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.

What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.

Emil Cioran, in "A Short History of Decay", thinks that if humanity were deprived of work and sustained action for an indefinitely long "Sunday afternoon," boredom would become so unbearable that violence—crime in particular—would emerge as the principal means of escaping the oppressive emptiness of time.

"If Sunday afternoons were extended for months, where would humanity get to, liberated from sweat, from the weight of the first curse? The experiment would be worth the trouble. It is more than likely that crime would become the sole diversion, that debauchery would seem candor, shouting melody and jeers tenderness. The sensation of time's immensity would make each second into an intolerable torment, a sublime firing squad. In hearts imbued with poetry would appear a blasé cannibalism and a hyena's melancholy; butchers and executioners would die out—of lethargy; churches and brothels would split with sighs. The universe transformed into a Sunday afternoon... it is the very definition of ennui, and the end of the universe."

Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?

I used to read this blog over a decade ago and I'm very surprised to see it's still going.

> It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease.

I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.

This version of doing nothing IMO is still “doing something”. It’s clearly not “just existing” to have a standard that you must hold still, not look around the room, not engage in thinking, notice how you’re feeling, etc.

It’s clear when you see the picture of the cat in the article that the cat has none of these concerns.

I’d consider this to be a form of meditation - still containing ideas of “this, not that”.

Something that has felt much more rewarding to me is to really just exist, but without any ideas of being present, or things you must do or not do. I just sit and take a break from doing anything on purpose. My mind might wander, or it might not. When it does “wander”, and I realize that it’s been wandering it almost feels like a miracle - how is this thing doing this on its own? But that’s not really the point either. Whatever is here now, is here now, whether you notice it or not. And by the time you notice it, it’s gone. So what difference is there between thinking and not thinking?

I'm lucky enough to not notice my tinnitus except when I try to do nothing.

1. Don't do anything 2. Be content

The second rule conflicts with the first making this impossible.

Any experienced meditator knows that to 'be content' isn't a passive action. You have to think to do it.

If you truly practice no thought, there is no 'content' to be.

Such great advice. I have been meditating for over 50 years, and while this meditation practice is key to my being happy and content in my personal life, hobbies, and work the techniques in this excellent article are something I have only taken up in the last few years. Sitting quietly just feeling grateful for quiet ‘do nothing’ time is wonderful, and just a few minutes at a time feels good.

"It’s oddly difficult to do nothing"

This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.

> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear.

Alternative interpretation: my existence is not about sitting there, getting mouldy on the sofa. It never crosses my mind that I should feel unrest because I can't / don't want to just sit there and do nothing, nor does it feel like a revelation to think about it. Maybe it also says something about you if this is something you worry about on some deep level.

Isn't that just how one falls asleep? I've been doing this every evening for decades.

I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you.

Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?

I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.

I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".

(end rant)

I recently found out that I'm the most miserable when I'm rushing.

If something happens, and I allow it to break the flow of things, I become stressed and worried and time flies. When I allowed myself to simply exist for a week, without a crazy planned-in-advance vacation, the week felt like a month. No joking.

Where this urge to always rush comes from is a good question. I imagine it's very much cultural, we're expected to rush and be busy.

This seems more like an awareness practice than a "being" practice as I was led to believe by "exist" in the title.

Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.

I don't understand the hero image of hipsters sipping espresso in a cafe.

Is that an example of how to exist? How not to exist? I can see an argument for either one lol.

I’ve never met another person who can “sit like a frog” who didn’t have to go through something unbearable

That has been my experience at least

I guess I could imagine this being tricky if you're stuck in a city apartment with no yard and no park nearby ...

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

--Pascal

  > By “don’t do anything,” I mean don’t move, don’t fidget, don’t indulge any thoughts or daydreams.

“Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.”

Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.

Wow if a page ever needed reader mode, this would be it… Light grey on white !nice

I feel like people are already pretty great at dissociating and ignoring their own thoughts and feelings just to exist today.

I live in the hood and can’t believe how many people just “chill” all day.

Sun up to sun down just sitting or standing doing nothing. Occasionally yell at their dog which has never been to a beach or park, both of which are less than 1 mile away. Blaring loud music, the same rhythmic narcissism over and over, just sitting around without a single creative or productive thought “chillin”

Hey what are you doing?

“Chillin”

Why? Your life’s in shambles

“Huh? No I chillin”

That’s how most are already spending their ~80 years.

So, I kinda hate meditation. I like building things, playing in the ocean, creating, writing, traveling, eating ice cream with friends getting caught up on their lives.

I’m LIVIN! Not chillin or meditating.

I don’t want to be a human being, but a human doing!

Why do this? Is there any evidence that this has actual benefits?

After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol.

Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.

I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder.

I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.

The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.

TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.

P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.

Doing nothing? You’ll still have to breathe. ;)

I know what the author means, but I don't share the experience.

Honestly, when I check that article, for me, it's talking about existing with peace. Everyone of us exists. We are just passing the time. But the truth is to realizing that to realizing that the existence is not just let the time pass, go beyond that. Beyond the matrix.

Simple idea, big payoff

There is no internet in heaven.

Someone has discovered existential dread.

"cogito ergo sum"

- Rene Descartes

This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.

> 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.

I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.

Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.

Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.

As a long time meditator I know it's genuine from this:

> See how long it takes before you’re dying for it to be over.

This is actually true and it shows that they have properly done the exercise correctly. The reason is that daily living creates psychological sludge which somehow gets embedded on the level of feelings. Those stuck feelings are what give that sense.

Once the thought layer is peeled focus comes on feelings and then let's just say there's one more layer beneath into full blown Presence which is blissful. Why it's blissful to this day I still don't understand.

What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page.

>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.

Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?

a lot of the previous posts on the site are all about doing all sorts of things and squeezing the juice out of them :)

This sounds a lot like:

"Try doing this thing."

"No."

"You can't do it because of your deficiencies."

"I won't do it because all you've done is spout a bunch of pseudoscience."

no

doing nothing wouldnt have created the microprocessor.

Great post. The author sounds like he loves life. Not a lot of BS to it.

Not really sure how to feel about this post. I guess I will try still..

> When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.

It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.

TLDR

> 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.

I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.

Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.

> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.

This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.

I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.

I'm just trying to Exit.

I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least