Boketto: Discover the Importance of Not Doing
Do you ever catch yourself, staring out the window at nothing?
I often find myself gazing mindlessly into empty space, not really look at anything but not really thinking about anything either. My eyes aren’t focused and my brain certainly isn’t either.
Turns out this phenomenon has a rather beautiful name in Japenese:
Boketto.
[defn] Boketto: To gaze vacantly into the distance without thinking about anything specific.
In its native script: ボケット
According to this, Boketto is an onomatepeic word meaning “to do nothing,” derived from the word for daydreaming.
We could call it daydreaming but it’s also not quite the same. I’m not dreaming. In fact, I’m not thinking about anything at all. The word boketto seems to capture my vacant, dreamy gazing out the window wonderfully.
I don’t believe there is a word for this in English so I’ll steal the Japenese one instead.
Boketto.
It’s nice to take a mental rest, every now and again.
We can read all we like on being productive. But if you’re feeling stressed, tired, exhausted.. maybe it’s time you take a little moment to do nothing. Because…
