Ever since I quit working, I have been faced with one question which I have been unable to even understand, leave alone answer. I keep getting asked how I manage to pass time.
Strangely, in my working days, I seem to have acquired a wholly undeserved reputation of being a workaholic. When that is the farthest from who I really was. It was just that I hated working so much that I used to want to finish it off as soon as possible so that I could get on with the more important activity of leaning back in my seat, closing my eyes and thinking deep thoughts, accompanied by a snore or two in the process. And, as it unfortunately happens in offices, the moment people hear your melodious snores they feel the irresistible need to helpfully push more work on you, assuming that you are bored of having nothing to do. Bored? Me?
Well, that comes from that queer notion that a man without anything to do will find it difficult to pass time. Me, I never felt the need. I mean, why did I have to do anything to make time pass? The minutes ticked and the seconds tocked without bothering about whether I was helping them along or no, so what was the problem? I allowed Time to go its way and I went mine, so there never really was a problem to pass time for me.
Like I have had reason to say before, when there is work to be done, Time just flew by. I start the day thinking I will get around to it soon and, before I know it, it is night and I feel that tomorrow is a better time to do it than today. And so it went. Perhaps that's what Einstein called relativity. Time seems to move faster when you have work than when you do not. Maybe that's the reason why people keep asking me "What do you do to pass time?" As a euphemistic question about what work I postpone.
Anyway, I do have my pastimes. Since childhood, I have been addicted to reading so I did not have to search for something to do when I had no convenient office to thrust things on me.
But, yes, I never thought of it as Time hanging heavy on my hands and waiting for me to give it a push by reading. If I had, then reading would probably have palled on me. It is only as long as it was something that I wanted to do that it was fun.
After all, if you start feeling that you HAVE to do something, it starts seeming like work!
True , usually we don't seem to have enough time to pass if we consider all that we love to do !
ReplyDeleteAnd for some reason we tend to belittle those things as "nothing important! Just time pass!"
Absolutely.
DeleteVery true 'if you start feeling that you HAVE to do something, it starts seeming like work'.
ReplyDeleteThe line between 'want to do' and 'have to do' is what divides work from fun, not the nature of the activity itself.
DeleteI panicked just a teeny weeny bit when I lost my job last March. But then it started happening...all that I had to do were things I wanted to do, and not just things that I needed to do. Life hasn't been better since!
ReplyDeleteWonderful, Frances.
DeleteNow in this quarantine we find ourselves with so much time on our hands and not enough "to do" to fill it. But I find it lovelier to just sit at the patio with my favorite chair and a cold drink in hand. Feel the gentle breeze on my face...see the treetops swaying to the wind...listen to birds chirping here and there...gaze up to the sky... just being there in awe of everything! Yes, nothing new, those things have been there since creation...but I wasn't in their presence then as I am now with my heart and soul very much awed by their beauty and glory. Yes, you guessed it right, heightened by the greater sense of a Higher Magnificent Presence. Something which in the flurry of living our lives we somehow forget.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you and your family.
It is a reaization which i too have experienced and find a lot almost all.that you have mentioned true in my case too....thanks for penning it down in such a superb manner..i thoroughly enjoyed it :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Arvind
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