Much Ado about Nothing

I am proud to say the only substantial accomplishment I’ve achieved this break has been finishing the entire series of “Desperate Housewives” (there are eight seasons if that helps put things into perspective.)

Unlike most of my Harvard peers, when I told people that my plans for break included a strict diet of Cherry Garcia FroYo and Netflix on autoplay, I actually meant it.

Instead of doing a winter session program, filling out applications, responding to emails, or checking my grades, I decided to take a more Buddha-approved approach to winter break (a.k.a. watching whatever my oh-so-thoughtful Netflix account recommended to me until my eyes blurred over.)

For those of you grimacing at the possibility of such blatant unproductivity, it’s time to consider some serious life changes.

Obviously, watching countless hours of TV isn’t for everyone—it takes a lot of hard work and will power combined with a very specific set of priorities. You must value time with fictional characters more than with your friends and family, whom you haven’t seen in months (an easily met qualification—TV characters are so much more interesting than real people), and have the strength to fight all urges to stretch and take breaks when your lower half goes numb or you feel that your bladder might explode due to excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup (the only true companion a Netflix-er has in her stoic yet solitary lifestyle.)

But for those who may doubt their resilience under such high-intensity conditions, do not fret; there are other options. Novice alternatives include yoga, meditation, watching bamboo grow, or sitting in a dark room staring at a Jerry Garcia poster. The takeaway from my lifestyle choices this winter break is that I was entirely unproductive (at least in the Harvardian sense of the word). I actively spent the last month of my life doing a whole lot of nothing, and, in all seriousness, it was the smartest decision I made all semester.

Harvard is, from the day you enter its gates, a cult of productivity. I realized the “easing-in” technique was an illegitimate college approach at Harvard as soon as the first activity fair rolled around—I discovered that people were signing up at every stand, not to con their way into more free Reese’s Pieces (as had been my intention), but because they genuinely planned on doing everything.

We may not inflict mandatory competition via grade deflation as some of our peer institutions (shout-out to Princeton and UChicago readers: No one cares that you’re more miserable than us), but that sure doesn’t stop us from being competitive. Everyone is in constant motion, terrified that to stop and take a breath means slipping down the rabbit hole. But would it be that bad to let oneself slip into a parallel universe—a wonderland of nothingness?

This past semester, I tried to correct my seemingly naive freshmen decision to pursue Reese’s rather than activities by piling on more jobs and extracurriculars. But instead of finding passion and a sense of success, all the extra busyness did was provide me with more money to spend on candy and an added sense of confusion and haziness. I effectively eliminated my “me-time” and, with it, any opportunity to think about things outside my immediate Harvard bubble. Even sleeping made me anxious. I parted with the pointless shenanigans that used to top my list of priorities, and, with it, parted with my sense of “me.”

This break, I remembered what it was like to relax. I began doing pointless, unproductive things again, things that made me happy. Besides binge watching TV series (my first and foremost priority), I allowed myself to space out without feeling anxious, started doing yoga again, and even left my house a few times to share my bubble of unproductivity with the people I love.

I relearned how to do nothing.

I’m sure I have plenty of angry emails needing to be addressed, application deadlines quickly approaching or even missed, grades that probably should’ve been dealt with long ago, but no matter how many problems I have waiting for me when I finally decide to re-enter the “real” world, I do not regret my time of nothingness one bit.

We need time to ourselves, time to think in order to reach any sort of clarity. Enveloped by nothingness, I could think about what made me me—what I was passionate about, what activities and classes I really should be involved with, and which ones I was just doing to make me feel adequate in a world of unearthly overachievers.

If you’ve started to forget what you ate for breakfast or can’t remember the last time you changed your shirt or washed your hair, it might be time to give yourself a break. Be spontaneous, go do something that will waste the next six hours of your life with no foreseeable benefits, and don't think about the repercussions. It could be going to one of the weird events you get on our house-list, walking to Target with your roommates, or just sitting by the river until your face goes numb.

Or maybe it’s watching six back-to-back episodes of Desperate Housewives.

Gabriela E. Weldon ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is a history and literature concentrator in Currier House.