A Waste of Time
Barbara Hale
March 12, 2023
I lost an hour last night and I am not happy about it. Every year when Daylight Savings Time rolls around, I get discombobulated and simply have a hard time adjusting. It can be days until I am back to my normal tired and grumpy self.
Yes, I am a bah humbug about Daylight Savings Time. And unfortunately, I only got my clocks changed to the falling back time a little over a month ago so now I have to do it again. Bummer!
When my husband Greg was around, he dutifully changed the clocks as soon as his feet hit the floor spring and fall. But me…I just constantly do the math in my head. Sometimes I am successful and often I’m not because I must remember am I springing forward or am I falling back. Why don’t I just change the clocks like Greg did, you might ask. Well, I don’t know why. I just don’t. It may be because I don’t think we should be changing the darn clocks twice a year and I can be stubborn. And maybe I’m just waiting for Greg to change them.
I will gladly admit that I am bad about clocks. But I do think about time a lot. At least in the metaphorical and nostalgic sense. And I think about the days passing and how little I’ve managed to accomplish with them.
But mostly, I think about sitting on my bike as a kid counting cars going past our houses with my good friend Randy who lived up the street from us. He got a point for every Chevy, and I got a point for every Ford. We lived out in the country, so our counts were low. Still, we sat for hours on our bikes just wasting time and counting in the heat and humidity of the Ohio summer. When it got too much for us, we would mosey down to his basement to watch old Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes movies. Nothing accomplished.
I think about graduating from high school and my college days partying more than studying. I think about when Greg and I got married and about having two kids and eventually 8 cats and 3 dogs. I think about the first time we walked into this church when I was still in my thirties…just barely. And now I am an elder here. I think about times when I just sat and stared off into space trying to clear my head. Time. It has all gone so fast.
I sure don’t want to go back, especially to the hot Ohio summers. But I do miss the people I’ve lost. Over the years I’ve lost my parents and my dear sister Cindy, my husband Greg, aunts, uncles and cousins, friends, 6 cats and 3 dogs. Would I love to spend more time with each and every one of them? Of course. But that’s not the way time works in our universe. It just keeps going forward except for in the fall when we get that one measly hour back. Regardless, we must keep in step with time because we have no choice.
But when I think about what I miss the most about times passing, it’s not anything of a constructive nature or even regret for the things I have failed to accomplish. What I miss are my father’s goofy jokes and his kindness to strangers. I miss sitting and eating radishes with Cindy and solving all the world’s problems. I miss the long road trips that Greg and I took and the days when we just got into the car and wandered. Once on a beautiful, warm, early spring day, we wandered around in Connecticut and then Rhode Island for hours looking for an open ice cream stand. Clearly, we were too early, and we ended up back here in Massachusetts late in the afternoon, but we found ice cream. I miss talking with my mother and my aunt Irene about the Cincinnati Reds and my mother and Irene admiring Joey Votto’s assets. I miss Ruth King saying cheerfully that it’s good to be seen. However, not one of the things I miss has anything to do with work or anything serious. What I miss is wasting time with the people I love the most.
In my humble opinion, we don’t allow ourselves enough to waste time. We live overscheduled lives. We’re constantly plugged in. We admire multi-tasking even if that’s not the most efficient way to get stuff done. It’s just the way it is in 2023. We live in a plugged-in universe. Facebook Tic Toc, Instagram, Twitter…Brother! I’m not going to diminish the necessity of work because it is necessary, but it is a very good thing to unplug now and then.
A few years ago, I happened to pick up a little book by Alan Lightman called Einstein’s Dreams. The writer of this book, Alan Lightman, is an interesting character. He has written essays, novels, and poetry but in addition to that, he’s a physicist. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at MIT. As such, he’s one of a very small number of MIT professors to straddle the worlds between science and the humanities. In 2017, the Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard, which is known as the Humanist Hub, presented Lightman with their first-ever Humanism in Literature Award. Lightman is also the founder of Harpswell, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia. Alan Lightman is no slacker.
But back to his book, Einstein’s Dreams. It’s a short study of time and Albert Einstein’s voyage toward his formulation of the special theory of relativity. Do I understand it? Not in the least, but the book is a beautiful look at different aspects of time. If anyone in the whole universe could understand time, it had to be Einstein. What he determined, from my understanding, which as I said is very limited, is that time is relative. In other words, the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference.
To me as a non-physicist, that means that when you’re enjoying yourself, time passes quickly and when you’re doing something you really don’t want to do, time drags. Now, at my age, I don’t mind time dragging so much, but I have to say that looking back, I certainly appreciate the fleeting moments much more than the excruciating ones even though I may have benefited from the excruciating ones medically or educationally.
Those of us who have waited for a loved one to die know this feeling of time creeping much more than we want to. Each night while I waited for the call to tell me that my sister didn’t make it, I thought about our times together. Our good times. She was a fantastic cook and the many happy meals with her were such a comfort and joy. She and her first husband Mark had these fantastic parties that I can still conjure up in my head. So much fun. Music and scotch and maybe a little weed. But nothing productive came of those times. We were just wasting time with each other. Just being together.
In another of his books In Praise of Wasting Time, Alan Lightman talks about the origins of our feelings about wasting time. He says:
“There may even be a religious component in our communion with time. Consider the United States and England. According to the deep Puritan ethic imported from England in the founding of America and still present today, it is actually a sin to waste time.
“We can, perhaps, trace the roots of this ethic to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, written in 1646 and 1647 by the Westminster Assembly, a group of English and Scottish theologians. Most Puritans who colonized America in the seventeenth century subscribed to the Catechism. Question 61 reads: ‘What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?’ The answer: ‘The fourth commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.’ Note that ‘idleness’ is considered a profanity….”
He continues: “I would argue that even today, four centuries later, we can find deep in the American consciousness the Puritan work ethic that wasting time is immoral, that wasting time is a sin against God.”
I sure don’t agree with the Puritans on this subject. Lightman says, “In some ways, this moment, this single moment is just as vital as the billions of years of the cosmos. Every moment is a gift if only we can grab onto it. Wherever this strange universe we find ourselves in, we’re part of it. We’re connected. That’s meaning for me.”
I agree. Spending a moment doing nothing in particular with loved ones can be heavenly. Sitting alone and considering…what? Well, it doesn’t even matter what, but maybe in one of your quiet moments you can improve on Schechter’s formula for the number of galaxies with different luminosities. Who knows?
In any case, the quiet pursuit of our inner thoughts should never be discounted. Lightman says, “Mental downtime is having the space and freedom to wander about the vast hallways of memory and contemplate who we are. Downtime is when we can ponder our past and imagine our future. Downtime is when we can repair ourselves… And you don’t need to go to a meditation center in rural Wisconsin to unplug. All you need is time away from the rush and heave of the world. Quiet time. Alone time. Without downtime, we might not physically die, but we will die psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. In downtime, we are making sense of our lives. We are combing through the thousands of hours and days of our lives to find those experiences and thoughts that have personal meaning to us, that speak to us, sometimes in that quiet whispering voice.”
Don’t write off the value of wasting time. That’s what you will remember happily as you age and see your days shortening. In that way, I feel that wasting time is a spiritual pursuit. The act of sitting and staring can spur creativity that you never knew you had. Spending precious time with someone you will miss someday is the best time you can ever spend.
So let us take our time and wander down the street.
And stop under the branches of a tree
To admire the bottoms of the leaves
That we never bother to look at and so don’t see.
Let us take our time and open a book we’ve always wanted to read.
But somehow have never managed to crack its spine
To travel to worlds we’ll never know unless we take the time.
Let us take our time and cherish that elusive afternoon nap.
And wake up refreshed when we leave the quiet of it behind.
Let us take our time and drive out into the country,
Away from the “rush and heave” of the world.
And stop to moo at the cows,
Who never seem to hurry even though their lives are so short.
Let us take our time and look at one another.
And admire the small wonders all humans hold within.
Let us take our time to find a bench.
And stop and stare.
And feel the breeze
And smell the earth
And live in peace at least for a few minutes.
Let us take our time and cherish this short life.
With its ups and downs
Its ins and outs
Its frustrations and contentment
Its temptations and its fulfillments.
Let us take our time and feel grateful for the person sitting next to us,
For the friends we have and those we have lost.
For the family we love and those we only tolerate.
For the petting of a dog or a cat,
The laughter of a child,
The flash of a favorite color,
The snippet of a favorite song.
Let us take our time and feel the warmth of happy days gone by.
The touch of a hand,
The sharing of some wine,
The spark at the start of a friendship,
All the things life has handed us both good and bad.
For time always has her way and soon it will all be over.
Barbara Hale
March 12, 2023
I lost an hour last night and I am not happy about it. Every year when Daylight Savings Time rolls around, I get discombobulated and simply have a hard time adjusting. It can be days until I am back to my normal tired and grumpy self.
Yes, I am a bah humbug about Daylight Savings Time. And unfortunately, I only got my clocks changed to the falling back time a little over a month ago so now I have to do it again. Bummer!
When my husband Greg was around, he dutifully changed the clocks as soon as his feet hit the floor spring and fall. But me…I just constantly do the math in my head. Sometimes I am successful and often I’m not because I must remember am I springing forward or am I falling back. Why don’t I just change the clocks like Greg did, you might ask. Well, I don’t know why. I just don’t. It may be because I don’t think we should be changing the darn clocks twice a year and I can be stubborn. And maybe I’m just waiting for Greg to change them.
I will gladly admit that I am bad about clocks. But I do think about time a lot. At least in the metaphorical and nostalgic sense. And I think about the days passing and how little I’ve managed to accomplish with them.
But mostly, I think about sitting on my bike as a kid counting cars going past our houses with my good friend Randy who lived up the street from us. He got a point for every Chevy, and I got a point for every Ford. We lived out in the country, so our counts were low. Still, we sat for hours on our bikes just wasting time and counting in the heat and humidity of the Ohio summer. When it got too much for us, we would mosey down to his basement to watch old Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes movies. Nothing accomplished.
I think about graduating from high school and my college days partying more than studying. I think about when Greg and I got married and about having two kids and eventually 8 cats and 3 dogs. I think about the first time we walked into this church when I was still in my thirties…just barely. And now I am an elder here. I think about times when I just sat and stared off into space trying to clear my head. Time. It has all gone so fast.
I sure don’t want to go back, especially to the hot Ohio summers. But I do miss the people I’ve lost. Over the years I’ve lost my parents and my dear sister Cindy, my husband Greg, aunts, uncles and cousins, friends, 6 cats and 3 dogs. Would I love to spend more time with each and every one of them? Of course. But that’s not the way time works in our universe. It just keeps going forward except for in the fall when we get that one measly hour back. Regardless, we must keep in step with time because we have no choice.
But when I think about what I miss the most about times passing, it’s not anything of a constructive nature or even regret for the things I have failed to accomplish. What I miss are my father’s goofy jokes and his kindness to strangers. I miss sitting and eating radishes with Cindy and solving all the world’s problems. I miss the long road trips that Greg and I took and the days when we just got into the car and wandered. Once on a beautiful, warm, early spring day, we wandered around in Connecticut and then Rhode Island for hours looking for an open ice cream stand. Clearly, we were too early, and we ended up back here in Massachusetts late in the afternoon, but we found ice cream. I miss talking with my mother and my aunt Irene about the Cincinnati Reds and my mother and Irene admiring Joey Votto’s assets. I miss Ruth King saying cheerfully that it’s good to be seen. However, not one of the things I miss has anything to do with work or anything serious. What I miss is wasting time with the people I love the most.
In my humble opinion, we don’t allow ourselves enough to waste time. We live overscheduled lives. We’re constantly plugged in. We admire multi-tasking even if that’s not the most efficient way to get stuff done. It’s just the way it is in 2023. We live in a plugged-in universe. Facebook Tic Toc, Instagram, Twitter…Brother! I’m not going to diminish the necessity of work because it is necessary, but it is a very good thing to unplug now and then.
A few years ago, I happened to pick up a little book by Alan Lightman called Einstein’s Dreams. The writer of this book, Alan Lightman, is an interesting character. He has written essays, novels, and poetry but in addition to that, he’s a physicist. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at MIT. As such, he’s one of a very small number of MIT professors to straddle the worlds between science and the humanities. In 2017, the Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard, which is known as the Humanist Hub, presented Lightman with their first-ever Humanism in Literature Award. Lightman is also the founder of Harpswell, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia. Alan Lightman is no slacker.
But back to his book, Einstein’s Dreams. It’s a short study of time and Albert Einstein’s voyage toward his formulation of the special theory of relativity. Do I understand it? Not in the least, but the book is a beautiful look at different aspects of time. If anyone in the whole universe could understand time, it had to be Einstein. What he determined, from my understanding, which as I said is very limited, is that time is relative. In other words, the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference.
To me as a non-physicist, that means that when you’re enjoying yourself, time passes quickly and when you’re doing something you really don’t want to do, time drags. Now, at my age, I don’t mind time dragging so much, but I have to say that looking back, I certainly appreciate the fleeting moments much more than the excruciating ones even though I may have benefited from the excruciating ones medically or educationally.
Those of us who have waited for a loved one to die know this feeling of time creeping much more than we want to. Each night while I waited for the call to tell me that my sister didn’t make it, I thought about our times together. Our good times. She was a fantastic cook and the many happy meals with her were such a comfort and joy. She and her first husband Mark had these fantastic parties that I can still conjure up in my head. So much fun. Music and scotch and maybe a little weed. But nothing productive came of those times. We were just wasting time with each other. Just being together.
In another of his books In Praise of Wasting Time, Alan Lightman talks about the origins of our feelings about wasting time. He says:
“There may even be a religious component in our communion with time. Consider the United States and England. According to the deep Puritan ethic imported from England in the founding of America and still present today, it is actually a sin to waste time.
“We can, perhaps, trace the roots of this ethic to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, written in 1646 and 1647 by the Westminster Assembly, a group of English and Scottish theologians. Most Puritans who colonized America in the seventeenth century subscribed to the Catechism. Question 61 reads: ‘What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?’ The answer: ‘The fourth commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.’ Note that ‘idleness’ is considered a profanity….”
He continues: “I would argue that even today, four centuries later, we can find deep in the American consciousness the Puritan work ethic that wasting time is immoral, that wasting time is a sin against God.”
I sure don’t agree with the Puritans on this subject. Lightman says, “In some ways, this moment, this single moment is just as vital as the billions of years of the cosmos. Every moment is a gift if only we can grab onto it. Wherever this strange universe we find ourselves in, we’re part of it. We’re connected. That’s meaning for me.”
I agree. Spending a moment doing nothing in particular with loved ones can be heavenly. Sitting alone and considering…what? Well, it doesn’t even matter what, but maybe in one of your quiet moments you can improve on Schechter’s formula for the number of galaxies with different luminosities. Who knows?
In any case, the quiet pursuit of our inner thoughts should never be discounted. Lightman says, “Mental downtime is having the space and freedom to wander about the vast hallways of memory and contemplate who we are. Downtime is when we can ponder our past and imagine our future. Downtime is when we can repair ourselves… And you don’t need to go to a meditation center in rural Wisconsin to unplug. All you need is time away from the rush and heave of the world. Quiet time. Alone time. Without downtime, we might not physically die, but we will die psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. In downtime, we are making sense of our lives. We are combing through the thousands of hours and days of our lives to find those experiences and thoughts that have personal meaning to us, that speak to us, sometimes in that quiet whispering voice.”
Don’t write off the value of wasting time. That’s what you will remember happily as you age and see your days shortening. In that way, I feel that wasting time is a spiritual pursuit. The act of sitting and staring can spur creativity that you never knew you had. Spending precious time with someone you will miss someday is the best time you can ever spend.
So let us take our time and wander down the street.
And stop under the branches of a tree
To admire the bottoms of the leaves
That we never bother to look at and so don’t see.
Let us take our time and open a book we’ve always wanted to read.
But somehow have never managed to crack its spine
To travel to worlds we’ll never know unless we take the time.
Let us take our time and cherish that elusive afternoon nap.
And wake up refreshed when we leave the quiet of it behind.
Let us take our time and drive out into the country,
Away from the “rush and heave” of the world.
And stop to moo at the cows,
Who never seem to hurry even though their lives are so short.
Let us take our time and look at one another.
And admire the small wonders all humans hold within.
Let us take our time to find a bench.
And stop and stare.
And feel the breeze
And smell the earth
And live in peace at least for a few minutes.
Let us take our time and cherish this short life.
With its ups and downs
Its ins and outs
Its frustrations and contentment
Its temptations and its fulfillments.
Let us take our time and feel grateful for the person sitting next to us,
For the friends we have and those we have lost.
For the family we love and those we only tolerate.
For the petting of a dog or a cat,
The laughter of a child,
The flash of a favorite color,
The snippet of a favorite song.
Let us take our time and feel the warmth of happy days gone by.
The touch of a hand,
The sharing of some wine,
The spark at the start of a friendship,
All the things life has handed us both good and bad.
For time always has her way and soon it will all be over.