jamesCpeters.com   BOOK CLUB

'dealing with life's nuisances and Oprah'

OPRAH has a book club and my goal is to be just like OPRAH (except for being black or female - not that there's anything wrong with that), so here is my BOOK CLUB

A story is always better if you have someone to share it with. What could be better than sharing it with a group of friends who have read it, too?  Will you be my friend?

The Art of Doing Nothing

Sure, we all know how to do nothing. We all know how to lay around and waste time. But many of us are too busy to do it much, and when we do it, our minds are often on other things. We cannot relax and enjoy the nothingness.

Doing nothing can be a waste of time, or it can be an art form. Here’s how to become a master, and in the process, improve your life, melt away the stress and make yourself more productive when you actually do work.

Start small
Doing nothing, in the true sense of the word, can be overwhelming if you attempt to do too much nothing at once. Do small nothings at first. Focus on 5-10 minutes at a time, and start your practice sessions in a safe place — at home, not at work or in a busy public place. You may also not be ready to do nothing in the middle of nature, so do it in your bedroom or living room. Find a time and place where there are not many distractions, not much noise, not a lot of people to bother you.

• Setting aside some free time to do nothing on a regular basis is very healthy for your mind, body, and emotional life, especially if you find that you're really wearing yourself thin. Often times, we are encouraged by the actions of our fast-paced, high-information society to believe that staying busy is a normal and natural state of existence. Remember, there is no guilt in giving yourself some private downtime. How often you do nothing is up to you, but it should be a rejuvenating experience.

• Once you become good at doing nothing, you can use this new found time and energy to think of things, instead. This would not be doing "nothing," but thinking while shutting out the world. Focusing on one thing this way will help you to concentrate better than having your mind zoom over a million thoughts a minute.

• If you live in a small apartment, set aside a corner of a larger room with floor pillows, a softly scented candle and maybe a cozy throw. If these things aren't available, just find a quiet place for yourself.

• Try to temporarily forget about that work you have to get done, that test you need to study for, or that place you need to be, and just relax. Eventually, you will learn to plan what you will think about and not think about while doing nothing.

• If you have an intimate companion, try doing nothing together.

• If you really can't handle the idea (or guilt) of doing nothing, then learn how to fish. That way you just lay by a river and say, "I'm not doing nothing, I'm fishing!"

DOING NOTHING

A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America.

By Tom Lutz. 363 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux

I suspect that most people — like Oprah and the Federal Reserve Board — think they work pretty hard. But it isn't always easy to tell the difference between working and slacking, especially in the modern American "information" economy, where relatively few people do anything that is inarguably work, such as going down into a coal mine and coming back up with pieces of actual coal. A lot of us would have to admit that if we skipped a day or two of "work," or even a couple of months, or maybe even three or four years, we might miss our paychecks, but the impact on society would be minimal, or in the case of some professions (consultants, editorial writers, Paris Hilton) nonexistent.

So the question is: What is work? Why do we work? Is it a moral duty, or do we do it only because we have to? Is it O.K. to not work if we can get away with it? Do we resent those who are able to slack? Or do we envy them?

In the end, Lutz says, we need slackers, who serve "as a goad to examining our relation to work, as a role to adopt while finding our relation to work, as a critique of our culture's twisty relation to work and to leisure, and as a celebration of the same." Lutz's own son, he informs us, finally got off the sofa and went to work. Lutz himself declares at the end that, after all his hard work producing "Doing Nothing," he plans to take some time off.

                   The Porpoise Driven Life 
 

The name derives from French pourpois, originally from Medieval Latin porcopiscus (porcus pig + piscus fish).  Those French have a different word for everything.  It's like a whole other language.

Porpoises tend to be smaller but stouter than dolphins. They have small, rounded heads and blunt jaws instead of beaks. While dolphins have a round, bulbous "melon", porpoises do not.  You may hear dolphins described as melancholy (heads like a melon, and face like a collie), porpoises are not so described.   Porpoise teeth are spade-shaped, whereas dolphins have conical teeth. In addition, a porpoise's dorsal fin is generally triangular, rather than curved like that of many dolphins and large whales. Some species have small bumps, known as tubercles, on the leading edge of the dorsal fin. The function of these bumps is unknown. ^[2]

 These animals are the smallest cetaceans, reaching body lengths up to 2.5 metres (8 ft); the smallest species is the Vaquita, reaching up to 1.5 m (5 ft). In terms of weight the lightest is the Finless Porpoise at 30-45 kilograms (65-100 lb) and the heaviest is Dall's Porpoise at 130-200 kg (280-440 lb). Because of their small size, porpoises lose body heat to the water more rapidly than other cetaceans. Their stout shape, which minimizes surface area, may be an adaptation to reduce heat loss. Thick blubber also insulates them from the cold. The small size of porpoises requires them to eat frequently, rather than depending on fat reserves.^[2]

Life history

Porpoises are relatively r-selected compared with dolphins: that is, they rear young more quickly than dolphins. Female Dall's and Harbour Porpoises often become pregnant with a single calf each year, and pregnancy lasts for about 11 months. Porpoises have been known to live 8-10 years although there are some that lived to be 20.^[2]

^{So far I've presented books about fishing, fish, and doing nothing.}

BOOKS ABOUT NOT DOING ARE GREAT, BUT

WE NEED TO ADD A BOOK ABOUT NOT THINKING

To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. 

In Tolle's view, all wanting implies that the future is more desirable than the present. As long as you want something, you are seeking to reach some point in the future that promises fulfillment. Thereby you are making the present moment, as well as other persons', into a means to an end. More importantly, in desiring future events, you are denying the value of the present moment; the right now. And as Tolle points out, the right now is all you have.  Tolle says you don't need the future, or future lives, to find yourself, and you need to add nothing to "you" to find yourself.  Tolle believes that love comes into existence when you know who you are in your essence and then recognize the "other" as yourself. It is the end of the delusion of separation, which is created by excessive reliance on thinking.