Thinking

 Every morning has a small ritual. The Wise Woman, rising, asks: What are you doing?

I reply: Thinking.

This has gone on for decades. I get up in the morning before the house stirs and make coffee.

Many experts say this is an excellent opportunity to be productive. I resist that temptation.

I don’t do anything, except drink coffee and make a few notes in a composition book.

There’s so much to think about: what the woods are like, a remark in a friend’s letter, a bit of good conversation, a surprising fact in an interesting book, what it’s like to celebrate Independence Day in 2024.

Patricia Hampl, a fine essayist, explains it like this:

 

This isn’t sloth, it isn’t laziness. It isn’t even exhaustion. It is a late arriving awareness of consciousness existing for its own purpose, rippling with contentment and curiosity. One’s own idiosyncrasy reveals itself as a pleasure, without other value — but golden, amusing integrity hard-won and now at its leisure. Hand on heart, this life of the mind, lolling — tending to life’s real business.

 

I especially like the word “contentment.” If I won the lottery and could do anything I wanted to do, I would get up early, make coffee and think.

• Source: Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day; New York: Viking, 2018, p. 24.