Sometimes it’s OK to be lazy

Do you ever create space just to be?

Photo by Claire Brear on Unsplash

When I was a child, I didn’t have a cell phone. To be honest, a cell phone wouldn’t have done me much good because I also didn’t have a lot of friends. I was a shy, introverted, thoughtful creature. I was considered odd. I read Anna Karenina when I was 12. I devoured it in 24 hours, staying up all night reading in bed with a flashlight, a towel under the door to keep my parents from finding out and forcing me to go to sleep.

I also took long bike rides by myself. I lived in Jackson Heights. For those who don’t know New York City neighborhoods, if you’ve seen the panorama at the beginning of All in the Family, that was Astoria, which was about a mile from where I lived. Jackson Heights looked like that, row upon row of houses with their tiny back yards and even tinier front ones.

My house was close to LaGuardia Airport, about 2 miles as the crow flies. There were grassy fields near the airport, and sometimes, on the weekend, I’d ride my bike out there.

I would lay in the grass and watch the planes take off.

I didn’t do anything. I didn’t think anything. I just watched the planes. Sometimes one would fly directly overhead. Because the field was so close to the airport, it wouldn’t be very high up, and I could make out the details on…