ABC Wednesday

The letter is I

The word is Idleness

The internet abounds with quotations of famous people who deride the very idea of Idleness, presenting it as the work of the Devil and a sure road to Hell on a Handcart.

 

I quote excerpts from Isaac Watts "Against Idleness and Mischief"

 

"How doth the little busy Bee improve each shining Hour and gather Honey all the day from every opening flower!

....................

 

In Works of Labour or of Skill I would be busy too: For Satan finds some Mischief still

for idle hands to do."

But I, thinking of the pleasure and values of meditation, and delightful hours spent in the shade of a rustling tree reading a good book; of an empty mind, open to receive inspiration, I was on the

lookout for words of Praise for Idleness.

 

 

 

Here is what I found from Sir John Lubbock

 

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes

on the grass, under the trees, on a summer's day

listening to the murmur of water

or watching the clouds float across the sky

is by no means a waste of time"

 

And Robert Louis Stevenson, as well, came to the defense of Idleness

 

"Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality,

and a faculty for idleness implies an appetite

and a strong sense of personal identity"

 

Virginia Woolf supports my theory that the empty mind  is fertile ground

for whatever grand ideas may be floating around, ethereally

 

"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top".

 

and from more ancient times....

 

"Besides the noble art of getting things done there is the noble art of leaving things undone.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials".

 

Lin Yutang, with a suggestion of Occam's Razor

 

For more I Interpretations visit here, at ABC Wednesday

with thanks to Denise, Roger and all non-idle helpers.....