A Week of Nothing

My mind wanders less these days. I'm not sure yet if that's a good thing.

Last week I was in Goa for the entire week, and I was completely disconnected from work, from life. I didn't read books, listen to music, or watch movies. I would just sit there, alone, in the room, or on the beach, or in some cafe in nature. And my mind went quiet. So quiet that I haven't felt that feeling ever. There was nowhere to go, no task to do. It was just existing. And I think that feeling was surreal.

Then you might ask, "What did I do all day?" Well, there was farmland in front of my Airbnb, and it was raining, so the farm was filled with water. There was a small stream feeding into the main river, and there was a swing on my balcony. I would sit there watching the trees, the clouds, the birds, the peacocks in the distance. No noise, just a light breeze on my skin.

One day, I spent an hour on the beach without my phone, without a book, without music. The only thing I saw was the waves, and the only thing I heard was the waves,  those angry monsoon waves. I usually get emotional when I go to the beach, but this time I was blank. I spent some time in the water and some time just sitting on the sand, with zero thoughts of past, present, or future. It got late, and I left, and there was nothing after the fact either. No lingering feeling, no comedown. Just nothing.

I had been yearning for that feeling of nothingness for a long time, without knowing what it would feel like. When I was finally in it, I realised,  this is what nothingness feels like. And it wasn't a depressing kind of nothingness. It was calm, silent, positive,  not in a way that made you happy, but in a way that just let you be there.

Why did it feel good, though?

Looking at the farmland and the jungle in the distance, it hit me that in the city, we're bombarded with noise, notifications, construction, traffic, and the next task is always waiting. We move in and out of spaces, in and out of people, rarely still. On this vacation, I abolished all of it. I wanted to sit in that discomfort. The first day was difficult. From the next day onward, it got easier, and I went silent.

Sitting there, it started to feel like the reason was deeper than a week off work. We've abandoned nature,  but nature hasn't abandoned us. Somewhere in the last 100–200 years, after a couple of hundred thousand years of living inside it, we stepped outside of it. And I think that disconnect is doing more damage to us than we've admitted. This whole industrial age has fucked us up in ways we're only just starting to realise. Something has gone awfully wrong with the systems we've built.

That feeling was strong enough that it's stayed with me. It's been almost a week since the vacation ended, and I'm writing this still sitting in that state of nothingness. Every day I look at YouTube, Netflix, and my books with a blank stare, wondering what I'm supposed to do here. I don't want to do anything. My outlook on my job has gone from bad to worse. My energy to hustle is gone. And I think the final piece will be letting go of the desires I still have,  not many, but some.

So take this as an honest ask: look at how locked in you are to these industrial systems. And maybe, as a society, we actually need to touch grass.