Close to Nothing

There's that scene in Office Space when Peter is asking his neighbor Lawrence what he would do if he had a million dollars and money was no longer a life obstacle(though I don't know how secure a million dollars is in the long term this day and age). After Lawrence's two-chicks-at-the-same-time line he asks Peter for his answer:

"Nothing... I'd relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing."

To some, this boundary-less nothingness seems like an ideal freedom. To most of us, though, we soon realize that the thrill of nothing would wear off and turn into sheer boredom. We need something going on in our lives, something to preoccupy us, something to set our sights on, something to give us the energy to get out of bed and embark on a new day. Our lives have a natural structure in place of nurture, growing, learning, maturing, apexing, wilting, and dying. The deeper you sink into nothingness, nothingness is all you know. You'd lose focus, purpose, and will, and you wouldn't know what to do about it, because all you'd know to do is nothing. Life would become a living paradox: without structure, we'd have no freedom.

But what happens when your life temporarily becomes days not of nothing, but something close to it-- a life without immediate deadlines, appointments, or arrangements of any kind-- and you like the taste? What are you supposed to think when for a phase your days become extraordinarily simple, you can do whatever you want but actually do do the things you say you want to do, and you could really imagine yourself enjoying this routine for the long term? What does this say of you that you dread the day this has to stop and you must continue on the path you've set up surrounding this sabbatical? We can't live a life of "nothing", but can we live a life of "nothing required"? Could we sustain the will to set out for a new day of nothing-but-whatever with each rise of the sun? How long could we go?

Of course, you'd have to find a million dollars to pay the electric.