Doing nothing

I am on a mini-hiatus, defined most notably by ignoring my email.

Reading Tao Te Ching provides lots of moral support for doing nothing. The world will survive a few days of my not fixing its problems.

Not everyone likes this philosophy. Here in Massachusetts, a new law that mandates health insurance for all residents has been widely publicized on TV with the catch-phrase: "Ignoring a problem never made one go away."

Those seeking a counter-argument to this credo should read Lewis Thomas (Dean of Yale Medical School, etc., etc.) who in Lives of a Cell wrote an essay "Your Very Good Health," which he summed up near the end by saying, "The great secret... is that most things [i.e., health problems] get better by themselves."

Digging up Thomas' classic collection of essays has given me lots of other food for thought that I can share later, when I am back to doing something.

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