Idleness - Csikszentmihalvi

Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, said one of the most
important things in his life was being able to take a nap every
day after lunch for twenty minutes.  That's for two reasons. One
is that by developing a schedule that's under your control, you are
not being flogged around by life, as he puts it; you are not always
jumping to someone else's tune.  You develop your own rhythm...

The other thing is that it's during idle time that ideas have a chance
to recombine in new ways, because of we think consciously about
solving a problem or writing a book, then we are sitting there
forcing our ideas to move in a lockstep, in a straight line, and
probably what comes out is not very new or original.

For original ideas to come about, you have to to let them percolate
under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no
way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction.  So
they find their way, their random combinations that are driven by
forces we don't know about.  It's through this recombination that
something new may come up, not when we try to push them
directly.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalvi interviewed by Michael Toms in the
New Dimensions Newsletter.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many
 diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve
ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground
that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world
within...  By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives
from ourselves.

John Gardner

with thanks to Whiskey River

~

Personal Note - this is also why what I call "silent time" is
so important to me.  It doesn't have to be "meditation" but just
getting still, getting quiet, without interruption.  It seems then that
 words for a poem will rise to the surface, or an idea for something
that my mind could not "solve"...  Usually that "silent time" isn't
until the Quiet Hour, between 12 midnight and 1am  :)

MM

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering