To do Nothing

‘Why is it so hard to do nothing?’ I asked. I remembered in Winnie-the-Pooh Christopher Robin going out and his father calling after him:’ What are you going to do’, and C.R. answering:’ Nothing’, after which he went and did it.
‘Why do I feel guilty when I sit down and do nothing. I feel like I should do something terribly USEFUL like reading a book or looking up the stock market or knitting or discussing Hindu philosophy with somebody.
Epo-Na laughed. That is because you are a human animal. Human animals have forgotten a lot of things since they, what you call, evolved.  For us, we graze when we are hungry; we go to the waterhole when we are thirsty, we sleep when we are tired. We can see at night, so there is no gap between one day and the other, like for you. You go to bed and then the next day is a new day in which you have to invent a thousand ways to be occupied, so that you can feel important and indispensable. For us the day slips into night and again into day: we graze when we are hungry; we go to the waterhole when we are thirsty, we sleep when we are tired. When we want to do nothing – which is most of the time – we just do it. Therefore we understand many more things than you do, because our bodies, ears, eyes and nose tell us things that you cannot even imagine. Nature is our home. Your home is between four walls where you cannot see, hear or smell what goes on in the Universe. That is why you human animals often feel lonely – you have cut yourselves out from the rest of us.’
I looked at her. I remembered one day in Indonesia going into the woods to see a waterfall. There was an old lady with a small stand selling Fanta and Coca-cola. Nobody came, the tourist season was over. I sat down with her, and I would have sat there for the rest of my life, doing nothing, talking to the lady, selling Fanta. But my silly sense of duty called me back to my stressed life.
Now I wondered if that old lady had not been Epo-Na in disguise.
I sat down next to her in the grass and stroked her silken legs. She smiled and ruffled my hair with her lips, gently blowing air.