The pricelessness of unstructured time
I enjoyed reading a well-written perspective on time, boredom, regret, and the appreciation of time to oneself from Mark, at Soul Shelter. His post is about Charles Lamb’s (1775-1834) book The Superannuated Man.
I’ve always valued unstructured time. I was twenty when I aimlessly wandered around Western Europe for several months. And I mean aimless as a good thing. I had no agenda, little money, but lots of time. It was an open-ended adventure.
I remember seeing exhausted vacationing Americans with Eurail passes hell-bent on “seeing” the sights in as short a time as possible. They had a different concept of time from me. Valuing time has had its costs, but unlike Lamb’s regret for a life confined to a desk, I feel the cost has been so worthwhile.
Before reading Mark’s post, I was only aware of Charles Lamb through his quotes. His advice to his contemporary, Coleridge: “Cultivate simplicity.” Despite Lamb’s life of drudgery, he had his moments of levity:
“If ever I marry a wife,
I’ll marry a landlord’s daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold brandy and water.”
Lamb suffered time poverty. With only one day a week off and one week a year to recuperate, he had almost no leisure until he reached 50. After the initial shock, he wasn’t sure what to do with his leisure when it arrived. What a shame to look forward to retirement only to be disappointed when it arrives. Slowing down is a skill that needs to be cultivated if it is to be enjoyed.
I’ve added The Superannuated Man, to my book list, but I have no idea when I’ll find the time to read it.
So little time, so many books to read about so little time!
It pleases me to announce that when my girlfriend and I “go on holiday,” we tend to not do very much… I mean, we don’t just lie around on a beach, crisping our epidermises (”epidermi”?) – how boring would that be? – but we don’t make it our mission to see everything there is to see in the place where we are doing the seeing. We do a few things… we do some lying around on a beach… and we (and here’s an interesting concept) rela-a-a-ax. We spend long periods of time doing nothing, or things which come close to nothing, such as reading, walking, talking and eating/drinking.
Sometimes we come away from our hols – and I include herewith, under the definition of “hols,” periods of time we have simply had “off” – feeling little pangs of regret that there were things we could maybe have done that we didn’t do… but then we think… “ahh well, we can look forward to doing it next time”… or… “life’s too short to be filling it with constantly *doing stuff*”…
… because – as you suggest, Chris – you indeed can’t put a price on “unstructured time”! Although, living in the world that we do, you’d be hard-pressed to find folk who believe in this principle. Everything – all of our time – has to be *planned* to the minutest detail… we always have to know “what we’re going to do next”… and God forbid if we ever have “nothing to do”!
And on that note, I will ask… what are you doing for the weekend, Chris?
I am playing with the following ’system’:
1) I make a list of tasks that I need to do in the day
2) I complete these as quickly as possible
3) I make a firm promise to myself that I will stop working once these tasks have been completed.
When I stick to this system I find lots of unstructured time. But ‘priority drift’ still gets to me too often.
Albert,
I’m glad this system works for you. But look how similar this is to the religious idea of suffer in this world for salvation in the next, or work at a meaningless job now with the promise of retirement bliss.
I am very wary of future rewards at the expense of the now.
Dan,
It’s Saturday so I think the day should go something like this.
1. Get up
2. Have second thoughts and go back to bed
3. Get up take two: Tea
4. Read some of Tom Hodgkinson’s The Freedom Manifesto, although I don’t want to be too structured about it.
5. Go out into the garden and do Chi-Kung exercises before the sun gets too hot
6. Sit on the couch and stare out of the window. Probably feed the visiting squirrels.
7. Do some thinking
8. Have a bath
9. More tea
10. Walk down to the market with the missus and buy some fruit and vegetables, and get a massage
11. Eat something
12. Go to the badminton club and play with my friends
13. Home for a nap
14. Tea
15. Remind myself I am taking a day off from writing so read a bit more
16. Probably succumb to writing just a bit of my novel or at least reading it
17. More tea
18. More reading
19. More thinking
20. Go off to bed and listen to a play on headphones
Today is… wait for it… sunny!
Yes, I know, you folks who are fortunate enough to live in one of the sunniest places on Earth may not “get” the excitement inherent in this statement, but here in the UK “sunniness” (or at least that accompanied by genuine warmth) has been something of a rarity of late. So…
The missus and I spent about 2.5 hours simply lying on the grass/sun lounger, sleeping, reading and listening to the birds… bliss! :-)))
Christopher,
I have put a link to your delightful site on my blog, Reasonably Well. My blog deals with those who have too much time on their hands due to a chronic illness.
We tend to spend a great deal of time looking for ways to speed up our lives, and reading your site reminds us that perhaps we should look for the silver lining in our slowed down state.
regards,
Julia
Julia,
Thank you. I shall visit.
We are moving faster, but to what avail?
Great posting for Baby Boomers today on this topic at
http://www.Vaboomer.com
Slow down!