Busy with Nothing
I haven't put up a new post recently. For a while I considered why. In the end, it just seems like I don't have time to write any thoughts worth sharing. But when I think about the amount of time I have, it made me wonder: really, what do I do with my time? After all, I just graduated from school. I don't have a job. So what possibly is keeping me from writing? No class, no job, however, does not seem to make me idle. In fact, I always feel busy. I still wake up at 7:30am. I go to bed at midnight. So what's going on? I also feel stressed and anxious. I feel a burning pain in my chest. I am always thinking about what I have to do, and if i am not doing something, than I am missing out on something. So, I've been cleaning, organizing, filing, and doing taxes, laundry, walking, and coffees with friends, reading the paper, making my resume, cover letters, chatting on MSN etc. It seems I can't sit still. And everything that I do I do quickly. Walk fast. Eat fast. Drive fast. Go go go. But why?
I recently started to read In Praise of Slow, a book that, well, extols the usefulness of doing things from sex to eating more slowly. Admittedly, the book is a bore because it plays on the same theme all the time. But, it raises an interesting question. Essentially, I, like most people around me (my family) judge their usefulness to society, to ourselves, by the amount of things that we do. If we do nothing, we are nothing. So we rack up appointments and deadlines, more than we can handle or do effectively and simply increase the speed at which we undertake them. Those who sleep in, plan for a retirement, sit on a patio? Lazy! Criminals! Artsy bums. Yet this is hardly true. The more weight I feel on my shoulders means more misery.
As practice, I was on the subway platform walking to catch a train. Usually in this circumstance, I am sprinting, running, walking with fire under my heels to get to the stairs. Old people, children, tourists who amble into my way, I curse under my breath. Look where you are going! This time, however, I walked slowly. I took a deep breath. This time, people where rubbing to get past me! Ah, I watched them run run run. Even so, I could feel my mind pressing me to pick up the pace. I felt a tension in my feet just trying to go faster. Speed is an addiction. Try going slow tomorrow.
Here is a passage from Mark Slouka, a professor at Columbia University. Incidentally, this quote comes from his brilliant essay in the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. It is far more interesting than In the Praise of Slow:
"At times you can almost see it, this flypaper we're attached to, this mechanism we labor in, this delusion we inhabit. A thing of such magnitude can be hard to make out, of course, but you can rough out its shape and mark its progress, like Lon Chaney's Invisible Man, by its effects: by the things it renders quaint or obsolete, by the trail of discarded notions it leaves behind. What we're leaving behind today, at record pace, is whatever belief we might once have had in the value of unstructured time: in the privilege of contemplating our lives before they are gone, in the importance of uninterrupted conversation, in the beauty of play. In the thing in itself-unmediated, leading nowhere. In the present moment."
I recently started to read In Praise of Slow, a book that, well, extols the usefulness of doing things from sex to eating more slowly. Admittedly, the book is a bore because it plays on the same theme all the time. But, it raises an interesting question. Essentially, I, like most people around me (my family) judge their usefulness to society, to ourselves, by the amount of things that we do. If we do nothing, we are nothing. So we rack up appointments and deadlines, more than we can handle or do effectively and simply increase the speed at which we undertake them. Those who sleep in, plan for a retirement, sit on a patio? Lazy! Criminals! Artsy bums. Yet this is hardly true. The more weight I feel on my shoulders means more misery.
As practice, I was on the subway platform walking to catch a train. Usually in this circumstance, I am sprinting, running, walking with fire under my heels to get to the stairs. Old people, children, tourists who amble into my way, I curse under my breath. Look where you are going! This time, however, I walked slowly. I took a deep breath. This time, people where rubbing to get past me! Ah, I watched them run run run. Even so, I could feel my mind pressing me to pick up the pace. I felt a tension in my feet just trying to go faster. Speed is an addiction. Try going slow tomorrow.
Here is a passage from Mark Slouka, a professor at Columbia University. Incidentally, this quote comes from his brilliant essay in the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. It is far more interesting than In the Praise of Slow:
"At times you can almost see it, this flypaper we're attached to, this mechanism we labor in, this delusion we inhabit. A thing of such magnitude can be hard to make out, of course, but you can rough out its shape and mark its progress, like Lon Chaney's Invisible Man, by its effects: by the things it renders quaint or obsolete, by the trail of discarded notions it leaves behind. What we're leaving behind today, at record pace, is whatever belief we might once have had in the value of unstructured time: in the privilege of contemplating our lives before they are gone, in the importance of uninterrupted conversation, in the beauty of play. In the thing in itself-unmediated, leading nowhere. In the present moment."
posted by Mike at 8:19 PM
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