Socrates said: Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
We all think that we need to rush about and DO things...then, and only then will life be meaningful.
How wrong....how terribly wrong, and yet tell anyone to just take time off to do nothing and you are greeted with astonished stares, and the feeling that you must be mad to even think about such a thing in the first place....what will happen to industry? what will happen to work? what will happen to governments?
Reading 'In Arabian Nights' has more than clarified this view that we need to take lots and lots of time off....that we need to take time off to read and tell stories, to sit and dream and do nothing...
When Tahir Shah goes to the Sahara, he asks his Tuareg guide how the Tuareg spent their time doing nothing.
" We listen to the sounds," he said at length
" To the silence?"
" There is never silence."
And if life was too quiet, they talked, told stories, the Tuareg added.
And the importance of stories can never be stressed enough...but we have to have the time to shut out the world, and enter the world of stories....if for nothing else, but to be healed from the batterings of living...