There is a picture of me on a beach in Argentina. This is not a resort beach. It is on a completely deserted stretch of a sparsely populated place called the Peninsula Valdez. We had gone there to see the whales, the penguins and the elephant seals, all of which were mating. I am wearing almost everything in my suitcase layered against the evening chill. I am upright after a day spent crawling on all fours in the pebbles to avoid attracting the wrath of the many-tonned seals protecting their young. I am completely alone. I doubt I have ever been so happy.
I have this thing about emptiness. Being a devoted urbanite, I love living in the center of the action. But it also means that I long for the exact opposite. Emptiness. The beauty of nothing, nothing but the self in the moment. Modern life should be indicted for making us go to the other side of the world to find such places. Even on vacation, we flock, the company of the herd more comforting than the uncertainty of the unknown.
But what if you could step out of the maelstrom for a day a week? What if you could start the day with a blank sheet of paper—no agenda, no noise, no demands or deadlines? What if you didn’t know where the day would take you?
According to David Rock, a neuroscientist and author of Your Brain at Work, there are CEOs who come to work at least one day a week with nothing pre-determined.
They say that it is the way they do what they do, that dedicating a day to open-endedness, to looking and thinking and being receptive to the possibilities is the best way to think and act creatively.
Try it. Give emptiness a chance and see where it gets you. There is a beauty to not knowing.
