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Many of us cannot spend an hour of unscheduled time, cannot sit alone in a room for ten minutes without external stimulation, cannot take a walk in the woods without a smartphone. This behavioral syndrome is part of the noisy, hyperconnected, splintered, and high-speed matrix of the wired world.
Certainly, I have threatened my creative activities. Psychologists have long known that creativity thrives on unstructured time, on play, on “divergent thinking,” on unpurposed ramblings through the mansions of life. Gustav Mahler routinely took three- or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he took time off from his frenzied practice in Zurich and went to his country house in Bollingen. In the middle of a writing project, Gertrude Stein wandered about the countryside looking at cows. Einstein, in his
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walks without destination, from simply finding a
The sunlight and soil that nourish my inner self are solitude and personal reflection. When I listen to my inner self, I hear the breathing of my spirit. Those breaths are so tiny and delicate, I need stillness to hear them, I need slowness to hear them. I need vast, silent spaces in my mind. I need privacy. Without the breathing and the voice of my inner self, I am a prisoner of the wired world around me.
“in a cauldron of stimulus they can’t get away from, or don’t want to get away from, or don’t know how to get away from.”
