The Karate Kid

“Being still and doing nothing are two very different things.”

—Mr. Han

Obviously, unless we’re dead, we can’t literally be doing nothing.

The expression is more in the context of “I’m beat, I just want to go home, sit on the couch, and do nothing.”

Often, “doing nothing” refers to watching something on TV. Television is like a wheelchair for a lazy brain. It takes you wherever it wants to go, and you’re just there for the ride until that auto insurance commercial comes on and you start thinking about those unpaid bills on your desk.

This kind of slacking is neither refreshing nor particularly tiring. Doing nothing is for those times where you don’t have enough energy to do something creative (like figuring out how to make teaching grammar to your ten-year-old interesting) or something useful (like doing the dishes) and taking a catnap is either not an option or you’re afraid you’ll fall asleep and never wake up again.

Mr. Han is absolutely correct when he tells Dre Parker (played by Jaden Smith, who does an impressive job, by the way) that being still and doing nothing are two very different things.

That would be my movie quote understatement of the year, in fact. You can be still anytime. Being still is the state of mindful awareness. You can be still while jogging, lifting weights, and even while playing a Rachmaninoff prelude.

There seems to be an inertia in us that makes doing nothing a default condition and being still—which despite the way it sounds is about as far from doing nothing as you can get—something we think about, but rarely get around to being.

And I use the verb being, not doing, when I refer to being still because it’s not something you do, it’s a state of being. Now getting to that state does require doing. It requires a certain amount of energy to break the inertia. How much energy depends on the situation.

If you’re in bed, just about to sleep or just after waking up, and not a creature is stirring, so to speak, then the energy required to return to the state of mindful awareness is negligible.

If, on the other hand, you’re at the DVM or, God forbid, the Social Security Office, and you find out you’ve been spending the last two hours waiting in the wrong line, then being still might require the energy of a small thermonuclear explosion.

It seems to me that the more energy required to break the inertia from doing nothing to being still, the more intense the experience of presence.

If you can be still while some TSA dude pulls you to the side and asks you to spread‘em in front of an audience of tired, frustrated passengers, you’ve created a major shift in states of being. From tunnel-vision petty thought to mindful awareness.

The contrast makes for an exhilarating experience of ever-growing and self-sustaining life energy.

When do you find yourself being still most often?

[Related post: THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY]