Words by Jon Perry, picture by David Piper
I’m very pleased to present this new installment of Every Day is Sunday. Many thanks to Jon for his insights into idleness in the life of a busy person. Enjoy!
Last Wednesday, the sunset here on the Japan Sea coast was of a beauty that my prose could not possibly hope to adequately describe. The kind that should be accompanied by an arpeggio of celestial music. The kind that should be painted in oils by J.M.W. Turner. I mentioned this to a colleague who was half-buried by a pile of documents.
‘Lovely sunset.’
‘I don’t have time to look at that sort of thing.’
I’ll leave you some time to consider that response.
Enough time? No? A little longer, then.
I’d hate to think what would happen if I asked the same colleague if she would like a cup of tea.
‘Oh I’m far too busy for that! Let me look at my diary… Maybe I can squeeze in a hot drink a week on Wednesday between 8.30 and 8.35am, just before my December nap on the Friday.’
This way of life is certainly not to my liking. It is standard to excoriate the idle and praise the diligent. But does the devil really make work for idle hands? Or is hard work merely the weakness of denying oneself time to be idle? After all, idling is not as simple as inveterate hard workers might believe. Firstly, it gives you time to think, to confront yourself and force you to consider your situation. Are you happy? Are you doing what you want to do? What will you do in the months and years to come? These are big questions, and it would be facile to suggest that it is ?easy? to do this for any length of time. If we turn this traditional viewpoint on its head, it is easier to conclude that continued work is merely one way to avoid such searching topics, which might hoist the unprepared idler on a petard of his own dissatisfaction. Equally, as Mr McHenry so rightly suggested just last week, we can also ‘reflect, plan, create, calm ourselves and establish habits to just be happy’. Idling is essential because it allows time for innovation. None of us are at our happiest or most creative when we are rushed off our feet. Time to think is time to progress, to solve problems and most of all to be creative. Martin Luther used to do all of his thinking on the toilet, claiming it was the one place he could remain uninterrupted for long enough that ideas would come to him. We all need this ‘toilet time’. Not taking time to idle and use the creative, imaginative parts of our brain which humans are endowed with is as illogical as not using our opposable thumbs.
Why, then, is idling seen as inferior to hard work? Firstly, the results of hard work are more concrete than the results of idling. If a translator works for an hour and translates 1000 words into English, that is a visible result of his work. If he thinks for an hour about how he might improve his translation skills, there is no visible result. The latter is just as necessary, if not more so, than the former in doing a good job, but to the untrained eye only the former looks like work. A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.
Secondly, for the vast majority of the time people have been on earth, we have been primitive people who had to work hard merely to gain the necessaries of subsistence. It is only in the last century or thereabouts that we have arrived at a situation where we can afford the great luxury of idleness. Embrace it.
So, let’s sit down and have a nice bit of idling, shall we? How about it? Find an hour, any hour will do, when you have no other plans. Take yourself wherever you feel most relaxed and comfortable. I find myself most relaxed and comfortable when I place myself in front of a hot beverage and a piece of cake. You might enjoy the park, your bedroom or that little bit of the garden where the last rays of evening sun linger.
Then follow the advice of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and
‘Sit in reverie, and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind’
Happy idling, everyone.
