Lying in a Hammock and the Inward Life

I had the blessing of spending the holidays in Costa Rica. I only realized how stressful, due in large part  to political turmoil, the last two months had been in the United States when I landed and felt the warm air, saw the clear night sky, and my parents hugged me to welcome me. The vibe from people around us was happy and relaxed.
  
When we went to my parents' very simple and rustic house in Tárcoles, in the Pacific lowlands, I spent the first three days in a hammock. I read John Kaag's American Philosophy: A Love Story, dozed off, woke up, read a bit more, dozed off again, woke up, gave up on trying to think, and watched birds such as blue-crowned motmots, great kiskadees, and streaked flycatchers in the almendro and nance trees nearby. Every afternoon, as sunset neared, scarlet macaws flew overhead towards their nests in the Guacalillo magrove at the coast a few kilometers away.

 Lying in the hammock, restoring my strength and energy and relaxing mind, spirit and heart, I vaguely recalled the spirit of Thoreau's chapter on "Sounds" in Walden. He describes glorious mornings and full days spent in idleness:

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sung around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

But these hours and days were not misspent. On the contrary, they fostered his spiritual and mental growth:

I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.  

Thoreau’s neighbors in Concord, he surmised, must have thought he was lazy and indolent, unproductive and perhaps aloof. But Thoreau felt that at those moments he came close to observing the admonition, in the Sermon on the Mount, to regard the lilies of the field and the birds on the sky and live according to their free spirit:

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

Thoreau created his occasions and sought his moments. His sensuous hours spent doing nothing, like mine spent lying in the hammock, fed his inward life. Thoreau knew he had several lives to live, only one of which was political, as an individual committed to justice in relation to an unjust society. His inward moments were necessary to feed that life and confront it with vigor, strength, and balance. This is the theme to which I want to return.