The only thing I dislike about capitalism is capitalists — at least those who believe that time is money. Fine, time is money, but I’d trade an afternoon of loafing around for all the gold in the world. There are people who won’t have a beer with their friends because they think it’s a waste of time, people who won’t chat about trivial things with their children because they think it’s a waste of time, and people who are incapable of standing there, mouth agape like a fish, for long minutes contemplating a beautiful landscape because they think that’s the equivalent of throwing money away.
Indeed, not everything worthwhile in this life brings an economic return.
Indeed, not everything worthwhile in this life brings an economic return. Or perhaps it does, depending on how you look at it: spending some time sleeping and exercising often postpones the astronomical expense of a funeral, and that’s already a victory for any self-respecting miser.
They say laziness is one of the seven deadly sins, but no one has ever said that wasting time always means being lazy. One of the most fascinating things about summer is that we can devote time to doing nothing — absolutely nothing. We can look, smell, contemplate, breathe, listen, and even look at each other, smell each other, contemplate each other, and listen to each other if we’re in the company of the person we love. (RELATED: Leisure for Thought)
Let no one think that my timid anti-capitalist diatribe is a tribute to communism: in communist systems, wasting time is forbidden, just like everything else that isn’t compulsory.
Years ago, I had a girlfriend who seemed to stalk me every moment of the day, always looking for those rare occasions when I was enjoying my hobbies. Whether I was reading a book or watching a football match, she’d appear out of nowhere, wedge herself between me and the book or television, and say, “Now that you’re not doing anything…” The sentence was always followed by an exhortation to do something she considered useful — that is, go grocery shopping, wash the car, or take care of some household chore at her place. Later, I realized it wasn’t just her; I’ve met thousands of people who are incapable of understanding that someone might stop for a few minutes (without having just undergone an amputation or being recuperating from a heart attack) to watch a movie, listen to music, read poetry, or simply watch the sun sink below the horizon over the vast blue sea. (RELATED: At the Tip of Your Fingers)
The lives of these extremists of pragmatism are hell for them, but above all, they’re hell for everyone else. If you took away the contemplation of beauty, beers with friends, my weekly hours of reading, and those seemingly unproductive moments of leisure, my own life would become unlivable. What’s more, it would turn me into a sullen, irritable man prone to depression. Even more so, I mean.
One of the strangest things about this type of person is that they get bored all the time. Don’t imagine they keep themselves busy 24 hours a day because it makes them richer or more fulfilled. It’s much worse than that: they do it simply to avoid boredom. And, in many cases, to cover up their own existential emptiness with the old trick of piling layer upon layer of frantic activity on top of it.
If you think about the great moments that filled your heart at some point in your life and made you truly happy, you’ll realize they weren’t pragmatic in the slightest: the moment you first held your newborn baby, the first kiss with the love of your life, that nostalgic rock concert that left you with goosebumps, or that hefty novel that pierced your heart during one long summer of youth. No, you weren’t making money. You weren’t even doing anything useful for your home, your job, or your community. You were simply enjoying life in the most human way possible — a way that robots never will, reading mechanically only to regurgitate their opinions and knowledge as if they were nothing more than ones and zeros.
I’m enjoying wasting time more and more. Or at least what other people call wasting time. You know, sitting and gazing at the stars on these summer nights, throwing off my sleep schedule because a book has completely absorbed me, happily wasting hours listening to friends who are going through a rough patch, or gazing into the eyes of a beautiful woman for ages, even if I’m incapable of paying attention to what she’s saying. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m about to hit the middle of my 40s, but I believe one of life’s greatest lessons is learning how to waste time without remorse. And I confess: the more time I waste, the less guilty I feel about having wasted it. In fact, part of me would like to waste all my time from today until the day I die — but let’s keep that between you and me. I don’t want it showing up in my file when Judgment Day comes. I don’t think the Good Lord is going to condemn me for that, but there have been plenty of exceedingly pragmatic, rigid saints throughout history, and I wouldn’t want to see them in my courtroom, testifying against me.
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