9 ms·

How to Exist

• jdw64 2mo ago
  I'm just trying to Exit.
  • pizzathyme 2mo ago
    Don't give up, friend. People care for you. If no one else, this person online does! I hope you are able to find help.
    • md224 2mo ago
      it's possible that he was making a joke about exiting a startup but I appreciate your comment regardless
    • hankbond 2mo ago
      This is hacker news so there's a good chance they mean "have a successful acquisition of their business", in which case I hope they can Exit.
    • aakresearch 2mo ago
      Today there is no guarantee that that sequence of characters, or the one it was produced in reply to, or, indeed, this very one you are reading right now did not come from a bot. There is a lot of "care" being performed and not much left to just exist.
  • ryeguy_24 2mo ago
    If you are stuck in vim, it's :q. If you are stuck in life, stay with us, we want you to stay.
    • aakresearch 2mo ago
      Who's "we"?
    • rossant 2mo ago
      I came here to say this. You beat me to it.
  • cindyllm 2mo ago
    [dead]
• applfanboysbgon 2mo ago
  > When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying. It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.
  • BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
    Maybe "not unusual" is enough.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• annshress 2mo ago
  Not really sure how to feel about this post. I guess I will try still..
• sublinear 2mo ago
  > This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else. I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety. Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously. > This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath. This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst. I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.
  • onemoresoop 2mo ago
    > I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen. You assume others have had your experience and learnings from it. That’s clearly not possible so how else would you put it for them? Maybe you should contribute your own experience. But don’t expect everybody will allign to it 100%.
• gregfjohnson 2mo ago
  Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”
  • Archer6621 2mo ago
    How do you know whether that's not just you growing as a person? A few decades is quite a long time, a lot of personal growth could happen in that time with or without this practice.
• tim-projects 2mo ago
  1. Don't do anything 2. Be content The second rule conflicts with the first making this impossible. Any experienced meditator knows that to 'be content' isn't a passive action. You have to think to do it. If you truly practice no thought, there is no 'content' to be.
  • dozerly 2mo ago
    Maybe they mean something closer to “do nothing and try not to be miserable”
    • tim-projects 2mo ago
      The irony of this is that trying to be miserable is more likely to circle the square and become funny removing the misery. As a Brit I'm culturally familiar with this.
  • drdaeman 2mo ago
    The article allows for breathing and blinking, but has an odd constraint of “don’t move”, which AFAIK will make one fight their own neural system trying to autoregulate arousal. I’m not an expert but in my limited understanding, remaining completely still is not “not doing anything”, it’s very active inhibitory action. As an experiment, just get in a nice running shower, so your sensory system will get external stimulation. YMMV, but for me three minutes pass quick. I just did that and when I decided to check the time it was almost 5 minutes already. Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be, just chilling out and observing whatever is happening without actively participating - and three minutes is a pretty low mark for that, unless we’re talking about fellas with ADHD.
    • tim-projects 2mo ago
      Remaining completely still takes tremendous effort. Its harder than any dead lift or 100m sprint. You can do those at pace. But being still is binary act. It takes all the faculties and even then it's almost impossible without a very large amount of intense practice. > Real “doing nothing” is just leaving things be Yes that's it. That's what Zen, wu wei etc all point to. I've looked at this a lot and my current view point is any actual concept of enlightenment was probably something invented by an 'influencer' in meditation circles thousands of years ago.
• hackernud3s 2mo ago
  I don't understand the hero image of hipsters sipping espresso in a cafe. Is that an example of how to exist? How not to exist? I can see an argument for either one lol.
  • esikich 2mo ago
    I think I might. In a past life I was a full time musician and had tons of time to kill. I was able to just go to places and simply exist. It wasn't to read or work or write or meet anyone (everyone was at work after all), it was simply "I want some coffee". I'd people watch and daydream for a bit and then I'd go do something else. Whether or not that's what they had in mind idk, but it's what it immediately made me think of. I traded near absolute freedom for money, but that's just something you have to do as you get older I guess.
  • ip26 2mo ago
    It’s rather “libertarians as cats”. The heroism of being content doing nothing but drink some coffee, stands upon the backs of hundreds of people seeking to better themselves who brought that coffee to your lips.
• tbrownaw 2mo ago
  I guess I could imagine this being tricky if you're stuck in a city apartment with no yard and no park nearby ...
  • mkagenius 2mo ago
    You can close your eyes. Tricky if it's noisy - but then that's an issue in itself.
    • microtonal 2mo ago
      The foundation of this practice is just sitting still and observing in acceptance, which also works when it is noisy.
  • kaycey2022 2mo ago
    The more you require to do this - walk to the park, a lawn, no noise - the less you will do it. In reality you could be locked in a prison and still do it.
  • hahahaa 2mo ago
    Oxygenated air is all you need
  • Barrin92 2mo ago
    as the author points out, even thought in your own mind is a source of distraction and you can't run away from that. Fundamentally you can be at ease with city noise just like you can be with mental distraction. One of the big misconceptions about meditation for example tends to be that it's about avoiding or actively quieting noise be that internal or external. It's not about changing the content of your conscious experience but your relationship to it.
• ngvrnd 2mo ago
  I know what the author means, but I don't share the experience.
• gwintrob 2mo ago
  Great post. The author sounds like he loves life. Not a lot of BS to it.
• hackeman300 2mo ago
  I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least
  • rideontime 2mo ago
    I'm pretty sensitive to slop and didn't get it from this one. This blog's existed since 2009.
• BugsJustFindMe 2mo ago
  > It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease. I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.
  • luxuryballs 2mo ago
    I can only do it with instant satisfaction and ease on certain drugs or combinations of drugs, I assume it's a mechanical thing for me rather than spiritual, the brain functions, so could be both environmental and genetic, the body being like the ship for the spirit, though a spirit not at ease can disrupt an otherwise well oiled machine.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• augment_me 2mo ago
  In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living. Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
  • roncesvalles 2mo ago
    The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc. This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die. Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
    • 2b3a51 2mo ago
      Interesting comment, but I'm thinking of the time scales involved. Farming 6 to 8 thousand years ago, simultaneous development in several areas. Before that millennia of hunter-gatherers (with technologies thrown in like stone shaping and metals?). Before that it is millions of years after chimps/bonobos/us diverged. Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
      • Avicebron 2mo ago
        >Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language? Look up David Harvey's work, I think it was less language and more certain economic patterns demanding acceleration.
        • deleted 2mo ago
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• KunYuan 2mo ago
  [flagged]
• colordrops 2mo ago
  This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.
• nativeit 2mo ago
  I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder. I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs. The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future. TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks. P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.
• wxw 2mo ago
  > This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here. I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life. Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing. Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.
• nickvec 2mo ago
  “Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.” Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.
• topspin 2mo ago
  "It’s oddly difficult to do nothing" This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.
  • hahahaa 2mo ago
    What is an example? I can only think of a root canal procedure.
  • xlbuttplug2 2mo ago
    I think you're equating doing nothing with doing nothing productive. You're usually still ruminating or trying to distract yourself from the source of the pressure.
• kstenerud 2mo ago
  This sounds a lot like: "Try doing this thing." "No." "You can't do it because of your deficiencies." "I won't do it because all you've done is spout a bunch of pseudoscience."
• zkmon 2mo ago
  I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around. What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.
  • mathisfun123 2mo ago
    > I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around do you happen to be the narrator of notes from the underground?
    • antii 2mo ago
      [dead]
  • mindwok 2mo ago
    I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.
    • zkmon 2mo ago
      Too much self awareness is still a problem. Even if you have ICBMs and drones, a society that puts less emphasis on individuals than the community, can survive through offsprings and community traditions and beliefs. As long as the community lives on through its children, it's fine. For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as far as possible. My grandpa never liked to be called by his own name. The idea is, as long as there is someone to carry the family name, individuals should not matter.
• musicale 2mo ago
  Someone has discovered existential dread.
  • iammjm 2mo ago
    No, he’s discovered a temporary way out of it.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• xlbuttplug2 2mo ago
  I'm lucky enough to not notice my tinnitus except when I try to do nothing.
  • BloondAndDoom 2mo ago
    I have this same cactus same thing, but later on I realized even when I do nothing, and even my tinnitus is there I realized it doesn’t bother me anyway. I miss that deep winter / snow silence now and then but kind of learned to live with it I think. I realize this is very different experience for everyone.
  • imhoguy 2mo ago
    I noticed the more I do nothing (and think nothing) the more my tinnitus lessens. I think mine has something to do with permanent neck muscle tension, the result of everyday rush and stress.
• C-x_C-f 2mo ago
  I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you. Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair? I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion. I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence". (end rant)
  • NikxDa 2mo ago
    of course you exist regardless of what you are doing. I think the term is just used because it is the most "plain" form of existing? Just being around and doing nothing else at all. I'm not sure the term used carries much weight.
  • deleted 2mo ago
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  • trinsic2 2mo ago
    The Author did mention if something is happening that gives you a desire to move on to the next thing might be a state of not being present. I would characterize worry being in the future because something about the present moment is disrupting.
  • deleted 2mo ago
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  • altmanaltman 2mo ago
    I mean it is hard to take such a blog seriouslt tbh with a title like "how to exist". I feel there is a lot of sprituality mumbo jumbo that gets lumped with meditation which is a fairly mechnical process that you can do to relax your body and mind, like a massage. But people are not happy with it just being message, they want to espouse it as a religion or something that will fundamentally change your thinking etc. But imo an asshole will still remain as asshole even if they medidate everyday. If you just look at the mechanics of breathing and thought control, they can be pretty useful to apply especially if you are prone to high anxiety. But there is nothing in it that will make you a better person or help you exists or whatever
• mseepgood 2mo ago
  Isn't that just how one falls asleep? I've been doing this every evening for decades.
  • thenoblesunfish 2mo ago
    "Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)
• tayo42 2mo ago
  After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol. Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.
  • dominicq 2mo ago
    Same lmao. Similarly, I don't want to be rude or assume things but I'm really annoyed with 20-something-year-olds giving out life advice. (I don't know if the author is in 20s)
    • iammjm 2mo ago
      Such a boomer sentiment. Good advice is good advice no matter how old the mouth that utters it
• jqbd 2mo ago
  Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
  • alexashka 2mo ago
    > Your brain is a prediction machine It's not. > I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function It isn't. > I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable Not having an opinion about everything for 3 minutes != vegetable. The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Neither is the polarizing fascination/dismissal it entails.
    • p2detar 2mo ago
      > The author of the post is selling what he himself doesn't understand. Paying attention to your inner chatter without judgement is part of a much broader tradition. Westerners stealing bits from cultures they don't understand is nothing new. Quite the elitist thing to say and a bit obsolete in the type of overly-connected world we live in today. Perhaps the author just shared personal experience; they did in fact write that the word „meditation“ was deliberately omitted.
      • deleted 2mo ago
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  • vixen99 2mo ago
    Sure - no real argument but it's maybe worth examining the assumptions underlying this which you know exist because you say 'maybe' and 'I am afraid ...'. Accounts abound as to why 'doing nothing' is not necessarily a negative activity. If you're in good health, sometimes absolutely passivity after having drunk in the fact that 'For a while I am alive and consciousness in this inexplicably incredible universe and it's a massive privilege' is extraordinarily beneficial for the times you are not predicting.
• TZubiri 2mo ago
  What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page. >Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action. Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?
• BohdanPetryshyn 2mo ago
  One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen. One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is? EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
  • jmfldn 2mo ago
    Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn. Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.
  • Matumio 2mo ago
    Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc. It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought. It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)
    • roenxi 2mo ago
      FWIW a good trick is to be aware of your thoughts, watch the tension/stress/realisation/anger/effort arising, the sort-of ignore them because they're thoughts and look for the way your mind tenses moving between them, then do the opposite of that tensing or let the tensing move you to a feeling of (say) extreme love or connection because if you're going to feel something that is more pleasant than stress. These things come and go, as you illustrate. Once you don't lean into them they tend to just go away. None of those things are doing meditation wrong, they're just things minds do. The mistake is in focusing on them instead of focusing on the process generating the changes.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• jmfldn 2mo ago
  As the Buddhist joke goes 'don't just do something, stand there'.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• triilman 2mo ago
  "cogito ergo sum" - Rene Descartes
  • N_Lens 2mo ago
    A limitation Descartes did not overcome!
• baud9600 2mo ago
  Wow if a page ever needed reader mode, this would be it… Light grey on white !nice
• vladsiu 2mo ago
  [dead]
• krishna180 2mo ago
  Honestly, when I check that article, for me, it's talking about existing with peace. Everyone of us exists. We are just passing the time. But the truth is to realizing that to realizing that the existence is not just let the time pass, go beyond that. Beyond the matrix.
• mf2hd 2mo ago
  There is no internet in heaven.
  • mottosso 2mo ago
    It is, after all, the cloud.
• dt3ft 2mo ago
  Why do this? Is there any evidence that this has actual benefits?
  • p2detar 2mo ago
    Not everything must be stats and numbers. You either try it and find out if it works for you or you don‘t. As simple as that.
• Nekorosu 2mo ago
  Doing nothing? You’ll still have to breathe. ;)
• uwagar 2mo ago
  doing nothing wouldnt have created the microprocessor.
  • znnajdla 2mo ago
    [dead]
• coolThingsFirst 2mo ago
  As a long time meditator I know it's genuine from this: > See how long it takes before you’re dying for it to be over. This is actually true and it shows that they have properly done the exercise correctly. The reason is that daily living creates psychological sludge which somehow gets embedded on the level of feelings. Those stuck feelings are what give that sense. Once the thought layer is peeled focus comes on feelings and then let's just say there's one more layer beneath into full blown Presence which is blissful. Why it's blissful to this day I still don't understand.
• jagadaga 2mo ago
  > By “don’t do anything,” I mean don’t move, don’t fidget, don’t indulge any thoughts or daydreams. Keeping all these rules in your head is also a thought, no?
  • crent 2mo ago
    I get where you’re coming from but they are listing these things out because those are some of the things you will likely automatically do to distract yourself from the present moment. I once tried to instruct someone on how to meditate and afterward they told me they spent the entire time working out solutions to problems in their head. I tried explaining that actively doing something, like solving problems in your head, means you are not meditating - you are thinking. They couldn’t bring themselves to sit there without getting their mind involved in something.
    • jagadaga 2mo ago
      So, instead of solving problems, you want them to solve the problem of not thinking about solving problems?
      • crent 2mo ago
        I sense the snark but no. Just fully experience your current moment as it changes without inserting yourself.
        • jagadaga 2mo ago
          IMO, a more logical approach is to let your thoughts flow and simply observe them instead of trying to control them (that never worked for me.)
          • crent 2mo ago
            Yeah that’s exactly what I mean by not inserting yourself. When you engage with the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, your awareness narrows and you focus on them. As your focus deepens, it becomes amplified and will continue. When you notice this happening, go back to a more neutral observer mindset and let it flow past. It’s a bit tricky because sometimes you get caught focusing on being the observer and letting sensations pass. It’s a more subtle thought but as you practice those subtle sensations become more apparent. It’s a useful sensation in the beginning to let the more “coarse” sensations and feelings go but eventually you need to let that go too.
• xenocratus 2mo ago
  > This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. Alternative interpretation: my existence is not about sitting there, getting mouldy on the sofa. It never crosses my mind that I should feel unrest because I can't / don't want to just sit there and do nothing, nor does it feel like a revelation to think about it. Maybe it also says something about you if this is something you worry about on some deep level.
• bdauvergne 2mo ago
  Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.
  • N_Lens 2mo ago
    Americans do seem to be a rather compulsive and anxious sort.
• oleggromov 2mo ago
  I recently found out that I'm the most miserable when I'm rushing. If something happens, and I allow it to break the flow of things, I become stressed and worried and time flies. When I allowed myself to simply exist for a week, without a crazy planned-in-advance vacation, the week felt like a month. No joking. Where this urge to always rush comes from is a good question. I imagine it's very much cultural, we're expected to rush and be busy.
• maxlin 2mo ago
  no
• netfortius 2mo ago
  Emil Cioran, in "A Short History of Decay", thinks that if humanity were deprived of work and sustained action for an indefinitely long "Sunday afternoon," boredom would become so unbearable that violence—crime in particular—would emerge as the principal means of escaping the oppressive emptiness of time. "If Sunday afternoons were extended for months, where would humanity get to, liberated from sweat, from the weight of the first curse? The experiment would be worth the trouble. It is more than likely that crime would become the sole diversion, that debauchery would seem candor, shouting melody and jeers tenderness. The sensation of time's immensity would make each second into an intolerable torment, a sublime firing squad. In hearts imbued with poetry would appear a blasé cannibalism and a hyena's melancholy; butchers and executioners would die out—of lethargy; churches and brothels would split with sighs. The universe transformed into a Sunday afternoon... it is the very definition of ennui, and the end of the universe."
• hnsmomdpvp 2mo ago
  [dead]
• cyanregiment 2mo ago
  I live in the hood and can’t believe how many people just “chill” all day. Sun up to sun down just sitting or standing doing nothing. Occasionally yell at their dog which has never been to a beach or park, both of which are less than 1 mile away. Blaring loud music, the same rhythmic narcissism over and over, just sitting around without a single creative or productive thought “chillin” Hey what are you doing? “Chillin” Why? Your life’s in shambles “Huh? No I chillin” That’s how most are already spending their ~80 years. So, I kinda hate meditation. I like building things, playing in the ocean, creating, writing, traveling, eating ice cream with friends getting caught up on their lives. I’m LIVIN! Not chillin or meditating. I don’t want to be a human being, but a human doing!
  • hbcdbff 2mo ago
    Maybe they’re happier that way
    • cyanregiment 2mo ago
      I'm sure they are, and those who waste their time meditating or praying to gods aren't actually wasting their time, since apparently they really are happier (according to various research). I think all these people are escaping the same thing - their own mortality.
• uwagar 2mo ago
  a lot of the previous posts on the site are all about doing all sorts of things and squeezing the juice out of them :)
• mark_l_watson 2mo ago
  Such great advice. I have been meditating for over 50 years, and while this meditation practice is key to my being happy and content in my personal life, hobbies, and work the techniques in this excellent article are something I have only taken up in the last few years. Sitting quietly just feeling grateful for quiet ‘do nothing’ time is wonderful, and just a few minutes at a time feels good.
• dfedbeef 2mo ago
  I feel like people are already pretty great at dissociating and ignoring their own thoughts and feelings just to exist today.
  • Matumio 2mo ago
    My experience is that if you try to sit still for 5 minutes, the opposite happens. The thoughts and feelings that you weren't aware of start mobbing you, and you have to at least acknowledge them to get your peace. It's also one of the hardest ways to waste time, getting busy with any distraction is much easier.
• msaltz 2mo ago
  This version of doing nothing IMO is still “doing something”. It’s clearly not “just existing” to have a standard that you must hold still, not look around the room, not engage in thinking, notice how you’re feeling, etc. It’s clear when you see the picture of the cat in the article that the cat has none of these concerns. I’d consider this to be a form of meditation - still containing ideas of “this, not that”. Something that has felt much more rewarding to me is to really just exist, but without any ideas of being present, or things you must do or not do. I just sit and take a break from doing anything on purpose. My mind might wander, or it might not. When it does “wander”, and I realize that it’s been wandering it almost feels like a miracle - how is this thing doing this on its own? But that’s not really the point either. Whatever is here now, is here now, whether you notice it or not. And by the time you notice it, it’s gone. So what difference is there between thinking and not thinking?
  • Murfalo 2mo ago
    Right, I think commonly "doing nothing"/meditation is approached with the goal of "doing something", i.e. "getting the hell out of here" or changing instead of sitting with how you feel in the present moment. And, just as you say, that basically defeats the entire purpose.
  • vishnugupta 2mo ago
    Seconded. For me "doing nothing" also means "doing nothing without following any rules" as you've stated. My version of doing nothing involves either just sitting outside watching the world go by or walking & wandering around. May poke at plants here or there, pick up a stone or throw it etc., But no, I'm not consciously trying to "calm my mind"
    • mrloopex 2mo ago
      Leave it to hacker news to bitch about how “meditation is wrong” just because it requires a tiny bit of effort to understand.
      • vishnugupta 2mo ago
• BoppreH 2mo ago
  > and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. I see this study cited often, and I always reject this interpretation. I'm perfectly content sitting for long periods, with or without my thoughts, but if you give me an electric toy I've never seen before, of course I'll play with it! Can I make muscles twitch? Move my arm? Are some parts more sensitive/conductive? What happens at the limits? For me, the pain would be the cost of playing with a new toy that gives me novel sensations. I would do it even if I had other, less painful activities available. It's not necessarily a way to avoid boredom or whatever else the common interpretation claims.
  • indiv0 2mo ago
    I like your take. I think I'd personally be in the same boat, if I was a participant in the study. Not sure if that take generalizes beyond us, though. https://xkcd.com/242/ https://xkcd.com/242/
    • BoppreH 2mo ago
      Counterpoint: every man that, upon being handed a taser, immediately tried (or was tempted to try) it on themselves. Maybe not a lightning machine, but safe electrical shocks? Probably not that uncommon. https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1oo299e/we_men_are_simple/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1oo299...
• miesman 2mo ago
  TLDR
• leon_build 2mo ago
  [dead]
• Cider9986 2mo ago
  This seems more like an awareness practice than a "being" practice as I was led to believe by "exist" in the title.
• backend_dev82 2mo ago
  I kept hearing about meditation. And at one point I tried it. With one app that was given to me for free through my employer's benefits. It had a counter of your current uninterrupted streak. (Meditating every day) I kept at it. First for 5 minutes a day. Soon for 10m a day. Then 20m Then twice a day at 20m. Then semi-guided, and in the end unguided (only a beep at the end). I never felt anything from it. Truly. Nada. Not better, or worse or calmer or more present or really really nothing. Yes while meditating I would catch my mind drift, I would come back to the breathing and continue the count. After this has been on for over 6 months and my counter of my streak was nearing 200. I decided to skip a day, only to see if I would get back to it if my counter was back at 0. Result? I never meditated again. Could it be that did it wrong? Possibly. Could it be that it just doesn't work on me? Possibly and this is the one explanation I'm going with The whole thing is just...nothing
  • deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  • samiskin 2mo ago
    In the west we tend to think of meditation as just the specific type of mindfulness practice that happened to catch on here, but there's really a whole plethora of meditative practices and traditions and different practices will resonate with different people. Its like how there's various different exercises and certain people might resonate with weightlifting while others resonate with calisthenics. Different practices are also meant to create a different effect. Respects to you for being able to stick with meditation for that long without seeing a result, perhaps the plain mindfulness didn't do much for you since you already had a mentality that was capable in the way it would've helped. If you were mainly focused on that one app though, if you have any remaining curiosity / patience for this what I'd suggest is experimenting with all sorts of practices for a short period of time each and just see if you feel particularly pulled to any of them. They all are "meditative" and involve specific ways of directing your attention/awareness/consciousness, they're all different paths to the same place, and I believe that different people are meant to take different paths. Here's some areas you can look into and what you might be able to receive from it: - There's contemplative practices of reflecting inward not to notice thoughts but to notice that which is doing the noticing. It's trying to seek out your true nature by taking the argument of "I can notice my thoughts therefore they are not me" further than that to "I can notice the noticing of thoughts too, so I'm not that either, so what am I?". The app "Waking Up" has some guided stuff in this area. Aside from simply an exercise in curiosity, there's a difference in how you move through the world and feel moved by the world as your understanding of what "you" are changes, just like how understanding that you are not your thoughts can be a radical change for someone. Advaita Vedanta is a whole field of philosophical inquiry around this type of thing if you're more attracted to that logical side. - There's all sorts of breathing practices that can calm you or energize you or bring about all sorts of subtle changes that are really hard to put into words. - There's chakra-based practices which rather than having to entertain chakras as a real thing you can interpret as just "this is a practice that is meant to produce a specific type of effect around what the chakra represents". You can think of them as categories of practices like exercising different muscle groups. Whether they work in the way they're described or not who knows, it's something you can just experiment with. - There's practices that help with restfulness and sleep like Yoga Nidra, where it genuinely (scientifically proven, some people call it NSDR) can bring similar benefits to sleep - There's the whole space of Yoga and Tai Chi if you want something more physical or flowy So perhaps "the whole thing is just... nothing" is true for "the whole of what you tried for you", but the _real_ whole is much much more than just that. Though in your position I'd be far too lazy to try these lol, I'm lucky in that starting off with the app _did_ feel like it produced a notable mental benefit so I had the reinforcement loop to keep exploring.
• fasterik 2mo ago
  I got really into meditation a few years ago. At the height of my practice, I was doing 1-2 hours per day, and I did one 7-day retreat. Since then, two things happened. One is that I completely lost interest in meditation. The second is that I feel I've become a lot better at emotional regulation and self-awareness. It's hard to tell whether meditation actually played a role in this, or whether it was other things I was doing, or just a natural consequence of aging and accumulated experience. Now my thoughts on meditation are that it's probably moderately beneficial, especially for someone like me prone to anxiety and depression and lacking in healthy lifestyle habits. But I'm skeptical of claims that it has unique benefits when compared to any other focused, rigorous activity like physical training, serious reading and writing, or playing a musical instrument. Or for that matter, eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep.
• bigupthewhole 2mo ago
  I find just going for a walk in nature, after walking for 2 hours something happens with my brain. I'm more calm, relaxed, focused, and coherent in my inner thoughts. I think it takes around 2 hours of inner monologue and thinking about all the problems I'm facing in my life until I feel like I'm done and I can let them go, or I've gone over them enough.
  • gf263 2mo ago
    My understanding is this is the default mode network allowing your brain to process things. I think modern life just completely inhibits any amount of this happening and that’s why these things are so important
  • shostack 2mo ago
    The closest I get to that is when I am getting a massage actually. If I get a 90 minute one, about halfway through my brain stops racing and I enter this, not quite hypnogogic, state where things are quiet and fluid and peaceful. The closest thing is waking up after a good night's sleep with an empty brain before the weight of the world comes crashing in.
• srid 2mo ago
  [flagged]
• BrenBarn 2mo ago
  "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." --Pascal
• AndrewKemendo 2mo ago
  I’ve never met another person who can “sit like a frog” who didn’t have to go through something unbearable That has been my experience at least
• hobo_mark 2mo ago
  I used to read this blog over a decade ago and I'm very surprised to see it's still going.
• brianweet 2mo ago
  My form of meditation is to go for a run, no music, no distractions. It usually takes me half an hour to finally reach a point where my mind goes quiet, I "solved" everything that would otherwise keep repeating in my mind while trying to sleep. I don't have to come up with a solution but at least it feels like I spent enough time on it to let it go. Especially long runs do wonders, I get into a relaxed trance like state which sticks even after running. Maybe it's the exhaustion or the fact that the energy is spent somewhere other than my brain, but I don't care, it feels nice.
• alun 2mo ago
  Maybe it's just me, but I don't actually feel any discomfort while sitting for 3 minutes doing nothing. Do most people actually struggle with that like the article says?
  • wting 2mo ago
    I think experiences vary depending on person and personality. I'm fine with doing nothing for a long time[0], but know friends and family members that struggle with not filling idle time with their phone. I do think this is learned behavior that people can adjust over time with practice (i.e. meditation). 0: I'm a voracious reader, frequent solo traveler, and was a paid photographer for a bit. Sitting, observing, and thinking is something that I do on a daily basis and comes naturally to me.
  • sean2 2mo ago
    I struggle, I think I'm most people: First, I procrastinate getting started because of all the things that I should be, want to be, or am doing. Then I start and its like taking the lid off a boiling pot of to-dos and thoughts that have been suppressed in the constant busyness of doing stuff. I want to attend to them all now, but I deny myself. Then I want to at least make sure to keep them all in mind so I can attend to them when the exercise ends, but I deny myself. This struggle boils up and down until the exercise is finally over. I get a few moments of peace of course. Sure, I spontaneously zone out sometimes, but purposely meditating is always the experience above.
• abhaynayar 2mo ago
  Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's worth doing. Evolution selected impatience for a reason. Of course, the flip-side is fake supernormal stimuli like screens, etc. that does more harm than good. The new environment we live in is incompatible with our old brains. But that doesn't mean you literally do nothing. It's ok to not meditate--figure out the right balance for you. I believe before meditating try getting rid of things like junk-food, doomscrolling etc. What's the point in meditating 15 minutes a day just to be distracted with cheap dopamine several of your waking hours.
• brausepulver 2mo ago
  Consider that a lot of the resistance to just existing is external expectations. I feel like I should always be doing something because I'm pressured to, or that small things bother me because I feel I need to perform. Being content to exist has to do with becoming aware of expectations and not letting them take over your life, I think. Might be why meditation doesn't work for some, as it's a rather brute-force way of doing this.