What's Going On Here?

I'm staying at my sister's apartment to babysit her cat while she's out of town. Let me just tell you how nice it is to have some time to myself. I need this time to breathe. Sometimes I have trouble dealing with all the talking and business of life. Sometimes I just need to sit on the peripheries of life. On the outside.Do you ever feel like you are an alien or something? Like maybe you don't understand human beings and why they do what they do. I think I don't get people. They are saying things sometimes that make no sense to me. And what exactly are they doing? What are we doing to each other?I was tutoring this twelve-year-old kid the other day and he looked like a zombie. Like he hadn't slept in days. I tried to get him to concentrate but to no avail. Apparently, I pushed him a little too hard and he started crying. I asked him what was wrong, before crying he told me he was tired because he just came from basketball camp. He didn't tell me what was wrong, but I could tell he was just worn out.I offered him some extra tokens, we give the kids tokens as a prize for working hard, they can eventually buy toys with the tokens. He perked up for a second, eventually, I just let him out early. The thing was he didn't get up when I told him he could go. He just sat there. I often get kids who are too sleepy or tired to do any meaningful work.It made me think about what parents are doing to their children these days. They are now in like seven activities and sports and then they have to get perfect grades. They are kids after all. Should they not just have time to do nothing? To just play. To just hang? Some of my fondest memories as a child were when I was alone in my living room playing pretend with myself. Maybe I was a weird kid, but I could entertain myself with no technology or planned activity. I had to use my creativity.Maybe kids need more time to themselves. It's really when you have nothing to do at all that you realize who you really are. What will you think? What will you do? Is all this planned activity too much for kids? Are kids getting burnout? Are all humans everywhere getting burnout? Are we just tired of doing and doing and doing all the time? If you ask the average person how they are, they will usually say one of two things. "I'm so tired." "I'm so busy."What are we so busy doing and why are we so tired? I have this time alone to write and be with myself every morning. I don't know what I would do without that quiet time for myself. I would go insane without it. I have gone crazy when not taking the time to do this.How many people take time to be quiet and sit with their thoughts. Even meditate and maybe stop thinking for a while and just be. It can be scary to face yourself in these quiet moments. All you have is yourself. But the truth of who you are often seeps through the silence. There is nothing more freeing than spending time with yourself and having nothing in particular to do.I am doing something right now, I'm writing this. However, I'm alone in the peaceful morning. It is actually not silent, I am playing music in the background. I'm also not totally alone, the cat is here with me. Petting a cat can be one of the most stress relieving things on this planet. What do cats do all day? They sit around.Cats know what's up in life. They know how to live life. True they don't have to pay rent or anything, but we could learn a lot from them. We are just animals after all.We are the animals who are so sure we are not animals. That we need an agenda, that we need to be constantly proving our worth. Not realizing our worth is inherent in the fact that we exist. We are all worthy of love and life.This may seem obvious, but I do think it's worth repeating. We don't have to do anything. Yeah, we need to do things to survive. But in the bigger sense, in the cosmic sense, we are not required to do anything by the universe or god. We can choose to do things, but really it is who we are that matters. Who are we when we are sitting alone in a room and no one else is watching?Are we the same person when we don't have to put on a face for anyone else? Before we shower and put on our make-up and clothes. Who are we naked? Who are we when we have nothing to say and no one to say it to? What do we really think about? What do we really care about? Who are we?nina