nothing to it

Following is a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” – from the chapter “Sounds”:

“I did not read books the first summer. I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveler’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance…..it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.”

Very early in the recliner yesterday, Sunday, with coffee and a book, the thought came to me to not turn on my computer all day. Not a moment of computer time. Which is the way the day went. Also, as I eat in my room in front of the computer, that first thought was followed by another – no food today. I did not eat a single morsel.

It brought to mind this passage from Thoreau.