Snail's pace and Niksen
doing nothing means being lazy, worthless and unproductive, but the Dutch concept and practice of Niksen, which translates as 'doing nothing', is about something superlative; it relaxes you, it rejuvenates, releases all tensions, helps you reflect and refreshes mind, body and soul.
In pre-digital times, we children would spend hours in the garden or park, following a snail's silvery trail. On finding the snail, we would sit there, waiting for further movement, of course, all at snail's pace.
But the experience was wondrous; the silvery trail like the moon's footprints on dark ocean waters; like the silver streaks in your grandma's hair and the snail itself were gorgeous with its two feelers twitching, as sensors, to help it find its way. Zen practitioner, author-blogger and musician Lewis Richmond writes that Niksen is the 'Dutch solution to our nightmare of intrusive stimuli'.
Richmond writes of times when there was no concept of 24x7 entertainment and no e-devices.
'In pre-industrial times, people naturally 'did nothing' in their daily lives in the sense of walking out to where the cows grazed, watching a sunset, waiting for fish to bite, or sitting in lamp-lit semi-darkness watching the shadows on the wall in the hour before bed.'
A delightful poem by W H Davies, titled Leisure, was part of our school curriculum. What it conveyed has stayed with me ever since.
