Do nothing Department
“You Do Not Have to DO SOMETHING!”
Frida has thoughts about your urgency
Nihilism: The idealistic notion that nothing can change the world. — Eric Jarosinski, “Nein: A Manifesto”
Hey, Human,
Again with the panic and chaos? Every week something is going awry with you. You come into the room — my room — and pace around, muttering, sweat beading, and that unmistakably human smell of fear.
The other human, the smart one, will come in and calm you. Rubbing your back. Cooing soothingly. You’ll start to calm but then jump away from the other human and yell, “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!”
Look, man, you provide the food, the shelter, the bedding, and the litter. You’re good at that and I don’t want to tell you your business — except when I do — but I am pretty certain that you DO NOT have to do something.
Ever.
As a cat, trust me when I say, doing nothing is almost always better than doing something.
I read this piece by Carol Lennox, and she’s, like, supposedly smart. Her advice was to, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” I don’t even think you should necessarily do something if it’s right. Just reading Lennox’s piece made me tired. This is what passes for advice, these days? “Do something?” I need a nap. For a cat. A cat nap.
And you seem to have fallen under her sway. Did I just hear you use the word, “proactive?”
Oh, fur God’s sake.
All the time, in those shows you watch, a bunch of humans are in danger from zombies of some sort and they whip themselves into a frenzy because, “We can’t just sit here and do nothing!” But — and I can’t stress this enough — you can sit there and do nothing. The universe, in fact, would prefer that (cf. inertia).
The natural state of all things is rest. We begin doing nothing. We end doing nothing. This bit in the middle — where we strive to “be the hero in our own story” — is a momentary anomaly. It’s an existential spasm that should absolutely not be coddled into thinking it has meaning or value.
You know what has value? Naps. You know what you can do while napping? Judge. I am not the hero of my own story. Heroes have to work too hard. I am the God of my own story. Gods nap and judge. That’s the way to be.
Now, excuse me. I’ve got some millennial nihilists coming over to take a few lessons.
feline ex nihilio,
Frida Katlo
This is a stealth prompt: write a piece that responds, builds on, or just lives in the same space as another MuddyUm piece! We call this the YES/AND initiative, because that’s the golden rule of improv comedy: never negate what the other person said, no matter how absurd. Always agree to their premise (YES), and add to it (AND). This might come in the form of a comic rebuttal (like this piece), but it’s still building on the concept that Carol Lennox laid down in her piece, “Do Something, Even if It’s Wrong,” which I thought was fantastic, but my cat had issues with.
Thanks to Carol Lennox and to Jules Jacov, who gifted me the final joke of this piece. Thanks for editorial brilliance from Carol, Amy Sea, and Betsy Denson.
Meanwhile, wouldn’t you rather be laughing? Go read MuddyUm!
