THE ART (and SCIENCE) OF DOING NOTHING!
Have you heard of the fishing story about the famous inventor Thomas Alva Edison?
Let’s start with the ‘science’ story first!
Edison had tried hard to find the right material to use as a filament for the incandescent light bulb. Many inventers had made several attempts earlier but the bulbs they built had extremely short lives or were too expensive to buy and therefore impractical. Edison refused to give up and sent his workers around the globe in search of the right material. The search ended in a bamboo grove in Kyoto, Japan in 1880! He had finally found his filament solution in the humble bamboo. And the rest as they say was history!
Now the ‘art’ story!
The story goes that Edison went fishing by himself almost every single day- but never once caught a fish! The world’s best scientist however had no qualms to be known as the world’s worst fisherman.
Someone once asked him why he was such a poor fisherman? He replied, “I never caught any fish because I never used any bait.” 😄
When they asked why he’d fish without bait, he responded, “Because when you fish without bait, people don’t bother you, and neither do the fish. It provides me my best time to think.”
Imagine pretending to be busy so he had quality time to think! In reality, what he was doing was slowing down and making good use of the silence and stillness. Allowing space for his genius creativity to rise to the surface. In ‘doing nothing’ while taking his legendary breaks, Edison’s famed imagination was at work conjuring his world-famous breakthroughs.
What bridges the science and art of this fascinating story is that on a fishing trip to Wyoming, Edison tried a fishing rod made from a bamboo pole. In a moment of epiphany, he got the idea to use bamboo as the filament which led to the invention of the first ever electric bulb.
