Doing nothing...just being

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is...."
- A meditation on doing nothing… just being.

Elephants at Amboseli - part of a huge herd making their way to the swamp for breakfast

Oven-heat is pulsing across my face, but it’s a comforting heat that delights the skin as long as you don’t get out into the full rays. As I glance down from the keypad I can see a labyrinth of acacia shadows dancing on the scrubby grass all around my feet. And if I stop typing and bring my eyes to the horizon, to the miles and miles of flat savannah I can immediately see dozens and dozens of elephants in every direction.

Behind me, teams of hefty baboons are playing mischief on the Lodge roof and trying to keep their distance from the Masai guard and his catapult.


We are in the heart of the Amboseli National Park on the edge of the Masai Mara, Kenya. It’s become famous for the hundreds of elephants who thrive here. For me the elephant is the most beautiful creature on the planet. Everything about them leaves me in a state of deep awe and wonderment.

Have you ever watched elephants walking across a landscape as old as time, strolling with an unhurried mystical rhythm. Walking in the silence with purpose and dignity. And from time to time the matriarch of the herd will stop to let the little ones rest or catch up and then they press on in search of the 150kg they must eat every day (40% trees and 60% grass). These mighty beasts know the terrain that looks all alike to me, like the wrinkles of their trunk and they can remember a track or a route they took 10 years previously.

This morning, while on an early morning game-drive, we came across a family of 15 elephants on their way to the swamp. They saw our jeep and hesitated for a couple of seconds to see if we would pass in front of them. Their gracious leading mamma eyed us without fear and then led her troop past us, tantalizingly close. So close we could hear them breathing and hear their footfall on the dusty earth….it was utterly awesome!


Thompson gazelles on their nimble feet skipped away on the other side of us while our driver said, “they are feeling lucky that they survived another night”.…gosh, I thought, now that’s a thought to wake up to. Or rather, “That’s a tough thought to live with every second of every day”. Out here on the plains they make a tasty dinner for lions and cheetahs.

We spent the week with the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro

I’m sipping ginger beer now, in the noonday heat. The unsettled violent troubles of Nairobi are a short 35 min plane-hop away, but they could very well belong to another continent. My mind is absorbed by the elephants in my immediate vision feasting on tender shoots in the swamps 300 yds away, the bulls look more reminiscent of wooly mammoths in the dazzling heat….and I feel deeply still within. Still, and I might even say, peacefully empty, and yet overflowing with the utter raw beauty that cradles me.

Maybe this is what being ‘mindfully IN the moment’ means. Mindfully open to being empty so one can be filled in a fresh way.

Richard Rohr, the Franciscan monk, in his latest book Immortal Diamond – the search for the true self, talks about the “contemplative sit”; to sit in silence, refusing to produce or perform. He speaks uncompromisingly about the benefits of meditation: taking time each day to realign ourselves.
He describes this as a ‘letting go’ and explains how the vast majority of us are trapped inside our False Self; the person we think we are. But through meditation and reflective practices we can learn to define ourselves a different way and he calls this finding our True Self.

Anyway, if you are interested in such things then do get this book or his other infamous work, Falling Upwards.

Back out on the savannah the hordes of zebra that had pitched their tents for grazing like the Children of Israel on the plains of Gilgal, have munched their way towards the shadow of Mt Kilimanjaro. Their stripy haunches have nibbled their way to pastures new and in their place a lonesome wildebeest saunters past rolling his shoulders in a slightly comical way; a bachelor in search of a mate. It’s truly a sad sight.

We learnt that some of these ‘old men’, can wait for years hoping that a 'gal might pass his territory so he can steal a moment of pleasure with her. Poor chap!



On the far off inky horizon, strange twisters of dust spiral upward, sometimes as many as 6 Wizard of Oz sandy vertical tubes can be spotted. Spinning round and round they pick up speed like mini tornadoes, then collapse and dissipate into dusty smudges.

It’s all part of the glorious drama of here, the exquisite, uncomplicated stillness that calls me into a different internal space. To explore what it means to discover a truer, richer more authentic self. An undefended self that isn’t afraid to think new thoughts, process hurts and wounds differently, reframe old internal narratives and is prepared to send a fragile ego packing when it takes me to unhelpful places.

In this colossal vista I can hear myself and I feel restored ....and thankful for finding the space to just be - without agenda, purpose or need to achieve.   - JB





 Buechner said, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the hidden and heart of it, because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace”.

Sunrise over the Amboseli plains