Niksen and Solitude – The art of doing nothing
Niksen – being alone with your thoughts. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal
Niksen is a Dutch lifestyle concept that centres on being idle. Despite the connotation, it is actually a good thing.
Niksen was a term originally used to describe lazy children. However, Niksen is now being seen in a more positive light as the need for quiet periods alone with our thoughts [read: unplugged or disconnected] are becoming increasingly rare.
Technology is awesome but it has brought about a cultural and human behavioural change so rapid that we may never grasp its true impact. Our commutes have changed. Our family time has changed. Our work has changed. Our time alone has changed.
We are never alone or disconnected when we have a phone in our pocket. Time alone—that valuable time needed to straighten out our thoughts, to be creative, to solve problems, to just ‘be’—has diminished, yet it is only now that we are discovering how vital time alone is to our health and wellbeing.
When we, ironically, take time to think about our modern lives, it is concerning to realise how connected we are and how full of white noise our lives have become. Phones, notifications, telecommunications…we are completely connected – 4G, 5G, wifi, cable, blu-tooth, FitBits, Apple watches, email, social media, messaging…
We have red-dot reminders and beep notifications that constantly distract and disturb our thought processes. Our world can be completely full of noise if we let it. It can be completely full of busyness if we let it.
We need to reconnect with the moment, to be present.
One person in the moment. Photo: Boston Globe/Getty Images
In his wonderful, wonderful account of two years alone in a cabin in the woods, Thoreau said in Walden:
‘We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.’
Replica of Thoreau’s cabin, near Walden Pond. Photo: RhythmicQuietude via Wikimedia Commons
Thoreau is cautioning that if we fill our minds with the unimportant, we will lose sight of the important. It was also in Walden that he famously wrote:
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what was not life…’
I could dwell on that final line all day.
Let it be
So, where does that leave us with Niksen?
Concepts and practices like mindfulness have gained a lot of ground in recent years. But where mindfulness is about being present; Niksen is simply about being.
Mindfulness is trying to bring people back into the moment; Niksen takes it further.
Your brain knows what it needs to process
Think about a saucepan full of boiling water. What is the lid doing? Steam is escaping wherever it can. The pressure builds up and escapes at one point; then another; sometimes several spots at one time as enough pressure builds and lifts that lid right up.
In many ways, Niksen is like that: it lets the pressure release where it needs to – not where you tell it to. Your brain knows what it needs to process. It will go where it needs to go. But we need to give our minds space and permission to do so.
So, while structured relaxation techniques are great, we also need a lack of structure. We need to let our minds wander and work through those pressure points. Niksen is simply finding time and space to be, to release the pressure valve and let our minds go where they need to go.
Inner Conversations
But there is something else about being alone with our thoughts – the inner conversations.
No one is more influential in your life than you are
We talk to ourselves more than anyone else. We therefore influence ourselves more than anyone else.
The pastor, speaker and writer, Paul Tripp, wrote:
‘No one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you as much as you talk to yourself. You're in an unending, incredibly important conversation with your soul every moment of every day. You interpret, organise, and analyse what's going on inside and outside of you. You talk to yourself about the past, you talk to yourself about the future, and you talk to yourself about what you're experiencing in the present.
Obviously, this is an internal conversation – if you had this conversation aloud, they would probably put you into a ward! But that's why it's so dangerous – you often don't even realise that you're saying things to yourself. But you are. You're saying things to you that will shape your desires, actions, and theology.’
Solitude (or is that Soulitude?) – Niksen’s best friend
I have always loved solitude – even before I knew it was a thing. I used to go away on my own for weeks at a time, surfing, camping and photographing deserted beaches and national parks. With all that self-talk, I became a very influential person!
It is still my thing. Most mornings I go for an ocean swim. And while I am with a group of other swimmers, I, like them, am very much alone in the water. Other days I’ll stop at one of several beaches for 10–15 minutes, sit on the sand and just be. I often swim after work too, bodysurfing a few waves and frolicking in creation; watching the sun set and the world wind down.
But that’s what I need to do. I need to feel the sand between my toes, the water on my skin, the salt drying in my hair, and, during the colder months, I need to feel apricity: the warmth of the winter sun.
I have what marine biologist and author Wallace J. Nichols calls a blue mind. The ocean is my happy place; it’s where I am most comfortable to let my mind off its leash and to go where it needs to go.
Sometimes I don’t like where it goes. I don’t like what I think about. Other times I don’t feel like it has wandered far enough.
I regularly go away on my bike for a few days. Where I once had a Kombi and took away as many surfboards, wetsuits, cameras and food as I could fit in, travelling on a motorcycle involves very little: a swag, a hootchie, a hiking stove, a change of clothes and my fins in case I go for a body surf.
Bike, swag, hootchie – and a beach nearby. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal
Part of the attraction is the simplicity. Part of it too is being on the road. No music to distract. No conversation other than self-talk. There are no movies to watch on the back of the seat in front of me. I can get to where I’m going with several hours of Niksen already under my belt.
There is a funny saying that: ‘you never see a motorcycle parked outside a psychologist’s office’. All your counselling is done on the bike. The more I think about that, the more I attribute that notion to Niksen, solitude and self-talk.
But for many, there can be an inherent fear of solitude and those inner conversations.
Writer and theologian, Henri Nouwen. Photo: unknown
Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest, writer and theologian (and, like Niksen, Dutch), wrote the following:
‘In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding; no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me—naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken—nothing.
It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.
But that is not all.
As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree.
Anger and greed begin to show their ugly faces. I give long, hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I am wealthy, influential, and very attractive—or poor, ugly, and in need of immediate consolation.
The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone.’
Being before doing
Niksen makes a lot of sense for those of us who are Christians and undoubtedly for those of other faiths. Repeatedly in the Bible we see there is being before there is doing. We see it with Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, John the Baptist and Paul. And we see it frequently with Jesus where he would retreat to a place of solitude and be alone.
Just looking through Luke’s Gospel, we read:
Luke 4:42 – ‘At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place.’
Luke 5:16 – ‘But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.’
Luke 9:18 – ‘Once when Jesus was praying in private…’
Luke 21: – ‘Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives…’
Luke 22:41 – (having gone again to the Mount of Olives) ‘He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them.’
Throughout Jesus’ life was a pattern of withdraw and engage, withdraw and engage.
But we also see this caution from James 1:19 ‘Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.’
We need to be, before we do. We need to recharge before we do more.
The ‘quiet time’
Christians have long used the term quiet time. I first heard it while attending a church camp—my first—when I was about 20. As self-explanatory as it sounds, I wondered if it was that simple. I wondered if we were supposed to be doing something in our quiet time. I soon learned that we could do whatever we chose: we could sit quietly, we could read the Bible, we could meditate, we could go for a walk, we could pray. The idea was that we did it alone.
Instead of being, we are doing.
Since then I’ve noticed increasingly more things proffered up to ‘help’ us in our quiet times: daily devotions, read the Bible in a year programs, or a sign up for a daily reading, prayer, Psalm, passage, verse, testimony, blog… This can be sent to our phone or inbox. We can have our quiet times planned for us 365 days a year.
Ironically, we added a whole lot of noise to our quiet time. Our time alone with God—and even our time alone—now involves a username and a password. And at least 3G.
Instead of being open, we are closed. Instead of letting Him speak to us, we are dictating terms. Instead of letting our minds deal with what they need, we are filling them with busyness.
Instead of being, we are doing.
Tame seagulls
I have read many accounts of single-handed sailors: men and women who spent enormous amounts of time alone. Joshua Slocum, Robin Lee Graham, Bernard Moitessier, Robin Knox Johnson, Kay Cottee, Jesse Martin, Jessica Watson. I always wonder (and dream!) of what that much time alone would be like.
Robin Lee Graham aboard Dove. Photo: unknown
Two of those sailors have had an incredible affect on me. Robin Lee Graham—who set off at age 16 and returned age 20 having found God, a wife and a desire for a life of simplicity is one. I have read Dove, Graham’s account of his journey, and the three National Geographic feature articles about him in 1968, 69 and 70, countless times. It would be fair to say that no other story has impacted me as much as Dove.
In Dove, Robin Lee Graham writes:
‘At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.’
It is a short quote, but the life application is profound. Graham returned, built a cabin in the woods in Montana and lived a spartan existence with his wife Patti and their children.
And then there is Bernard Moitessier. Where Graham was a teenage boy, Moitessier was a man and his book The Long Way is like a desirous mirror that I know is hanging within reach but which I am too scared to look in too often. His life, I fear, is too close to what mine could have easily become.
Moitessier was likely going to win the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race—the first round the world yacht race—and become the first person to have circumnavigated the globe non-stop, alone and unassisted. Gaining on race leader and eventual winner Robin Knox-Johnson, Moitessier had an epiphany: admitting that he saw no purpose in winning a race and having to deal with the fame that would follow. Being first mattered little to Moitessier so he changed course mid-Atlantic and made for Tahiti to visit some old friends instead (effectively becoming the first person to circumnavigate the globe one-and-a-half times, non-stop, alone and unassisted). ‘The first will be last and the last will be first’.
What Moitessier sought in his chosen lifestyle and in the race, was solitude. The open ocean was where he felt free. In The Long Way, he writes:
“You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time towards the open sea. It goes, that’s all.”
I suspect that Robin Lee Graham and Bernard Moitessier had the Niksen thing down pretty good.
Bernard Moitessier aboard Joshua. Photo: unknown
Conclusion
My challenge for us all is to unplug. To have inner conversations. To sit quietly and let your mind go where it needs to go. To simply be.
But I would also encourage you to seek God in the natural world, where, as John Denver sang, ‘You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply’.
I was raised an Anglican and now attend a Baptist church, but I often say that my church is the church of the big blue sky. Perhaps I should say the church of the big blue ocean. For it is there that I feel closest to God. It is there that I feel closest to me.
For whenever I seek solitude, I am, of course, never alone. God is with me. It is just the two of us and that is why I feel closest to Him when I am in nature. It is where my sins are revealed along with my faults, my mistakes, and my failings.
I would rather be alone with God at that time than alone with my phone with incoming calls, texts and emails – or with a ‘Read the Bible in a Year’ app.
I would rather be quick to listen, as the Apostle James says, than busy ticking the God box.
I would simply rather be.
It is confronting to be alone. Possibly because deep down we know what’s coming. Solitude is where our demons live. It’s easier and safer, to be busy.
But solitude is also where we find our better angels. It is where God waits for us. It is where grace happens.
Henri Nouwen again:
‘When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant. Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are “somebodies.”
But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people’s responses to us but God’s eternal love for us.’
I encourage you to be alone. I encourage you to do nothing.