Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn’t occur somehow inside of me, but between what I perceive as me and not-me.

It has to do with how endlessly strange reality is when we look at it rather than through it. —

So why go down the rabbit hole? First and most basically, it is enjoyable. Curiosity, something we know most of all from childhood, is a forward-driving force that derives from the differential between what is known and not known.

Nothing is harder to do than nothing.

More than observation, it also suggests a way of identifying with place, weaving oneself into a region through observation of and responsibility to the local ecosystem.

The second tool that doing nothing offers us is a sharpened ability to listen.

Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds

Diogenes also has much to teach us about how to refuse.

Most people have, or have known someone who has, gone through some period of “removal” that fundamentally changed their attitude to the world they returned to.