The Beauty of Doing Nothing

Today from a European time zone a friend Serge Kruger, famed Paris bon vivant, mused on Facebook, "Luckily I like to do nothing."

Je suis avec lui 100%.

According to Wikipedia the English borrowed ennui from French in the 1660s. Ennui came from an Old French word meaning “displeasure.” Ennui was also related to the word annoy, but it really is just a wistful listlessness. Ennui was adopted as the esprit total of the ancien regime whose lives as oppressors over the people of France had become meaningless after Louis XIV

Moi, j'adore de faire rien. Une vrai plaisir

Walter Richard Sicker - Ennui c.1914

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. - Henry Miller

Of course we are all a bundle of contradictions and Miller wrote in Tropic of Canceer, "“In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot.”

I am much ,ore at ease with doing nothing than Henry Miller. This morning I laid in bed until noon without questioning that state, then again I had worked six days in a row. It's not the work that is hard, but having to be around people. Congress with poeple is always more problematic than ennui. Here are some definitions of ennui - pathetic, careless, dull, inattentive, indifferent, lackadaisical, lethargic, passive, sleepy, tired, and weary. These sound as if they had been written by busybodies, who can't enjoy doing nothing

I would addd Slothful to their list, except I consider Sloth a blessing and no longer one of the Seven Deadly Sin.

Oh Sweet Nothing - The Velvet Underground.