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My father infamously created projects to keep my brother, sister and I busy in the summer time. Was plucking chickens a good life lesson? I can almost conjure up the nose-flaring stench today. Pew. The smell when one singes those remaining feathers off with flame is truly distinctive.

In our eulogies at his funeral, my brother and I shared some Dad’s-crazy-project-tales. Musing that Dad may have been torturing us in response to the biblical saying, “idle minds are the devil’s playground,” we succeeded in getting some smiles and guffaws: raising geese for Christmas dinner; picking a field-full of jalapenos; sawing wood to last all winter… Funny parts?

• Geese can be vicious creatures. They’re able to chase and peck with lightening speed. I’d arm myself with a tennis racket and practice my forehand when it was my turn to feed them. No one in our family—except Dad—actually liked to ingest geese so the leftovers eventually went to the dogs.
• Dad said “don’t eat them” so I promptly stuffed a couple jalapenos in my mouth—in the middle of the field—and ran faster than Usain Bolt to get to a water spigot. (This, somehow, was Dad’s fault.)
• Fortunately, when Dad chain-sawed the fingers off the glove I was wearing I got excused from the wood-cutter assistant role for the rest of the “let’s have a fire every night” season.

Dad got a lot right, even if his methods were sometimes smelly and once in a while a bit dangerous. Keeping one’s self from the idle mind/devil’s playground can be a good thing—to a point.

But if you’re keeping yourself busy, busy, busy to avoid letting your mind run free to create, imagine, or simply reflect, busy may have become the devil’s playground that is preventing you from a life of joy, awe, and gratitude.

This week, carve out some space to have what may initially feel like an “idle mind.”

Take an afternoon, an hour, or a block of 15 minutes and do a Tibetan monk impersonation. Detach from the “busy” and material things (especially TV, your smartphone, your computer).

Give yourself permission to meditate, create, or contemplate how you may serve others—and yourself—better.

Breathe. This week, choose to let go of the belief that idle is the opposite of busy. Please, don’t make me come there with a goose.

#PeaceHugs, Jone