What has happened to the art of sitting? People nowadays don’t just sit. They have to be involved in some activity like emailing, blogging, tweeting, reading or watching TV.
When I was a kid, people in my neighborhood sat on their front porches. Since this was New York, they were mostly protecting their valuables or waiting for the police to arrive. They were sitting, nonetheless. You do see people sitting in a doctor’s office — but these people are waiting. Big difference.
In some of those old English manors, there were sitting rooms. But if you ever saw a movie or read a book about life in those days, you’d know that people also did a lot of yakking to each other while they were sitting. They would converse about the murder that had just occurred in the sewing room or speculate about why the downstairs maid was spending so much time upstairs. In reality, these were talking rooms, not sitting rooms. My wife was addicted to “Downton Abbey.” A lot of talking in that show … OK, and maybe a few liaisons thrown in.
We need to applaud the historical significance of this leisurely activity. For it is in this repose that the truly lazy people of the world have made their impact. Do you think it was hardworking folks who came up with the idea for the backhoe, the chainsaw and the snow blower? Heavens no. It was the sluggish and the indolent looking for a way to get their work done quickly, so they could just sit for the rest of the day.
Cracker Barrel has tried to bring back sitting as an art form. The restaurants have this nifty front porch lined with sturdy rocking chairs. This is sit waiting to happen.
Sitting alone inside your house is actually a little weird. You see, part of the charm of sitting is that you are publicly displaying that you have the time and the inclination to just park your rear end in a chair. Not a bill to pay, a chore to do or a place to go. You can’t flaunt this in private. If word got out you were in your spare bedroom staring at the walls, the neighbors would call for some form of crisis intervention. But sit on your front step and gaze into space with a slight smirk, and there is immediate neighborhood speculation about an unexpected inheritance or gossip about you and the new UPS driver.
Sometimes to relax, I just sit in my driveway in an old beach chair. When my neighbor Josh sees me, he always grabs a stool from his garage and plants himself next to me. Then he wants to chat endlessly about politics or religion, but lately I’ve mustered up the nerve to tell Josh I’d rather be alone.
Some people just don’t sit well with me.
