I am wary of people who are always "busy". It sometimes suggests either incompetence in time management or a desire to emphasis their own self-importance.
Teachers are shockers at trumpeting their busyness. This is likely to be a by-product of many teachers’ phobia of being regarded as a shirker. Shirking is the new leprosy in this age of uber-efficiency and ultra-competitiveness. Often, those who protest about how busy and stressed they are, spend a substantial part of their day boring others with lengthy complaints about how busy and stressed they are. The busy colleague always comments about the 50 emails in their inbox each morning. My inbox normally contains a Viagra ad, the odd parent complaint and every now and then, an anaemic pay slip. Sometimes it pays to be irrelevant.
I feel guilty whenever I let someone into my own dirty little secret. I didn’t actually spend the entire holidays planning and preparing lessons for the new year. Sometimes I took a day off.
I used to hate morning assemblies. The deputy principal would conclude by urging the students to work harder. I approached him once and suggested he conclude by asking them to work smarter. A person can spend a lifetime working hard digging a coal mine with a tea spoon.
Many years ago, I discovered a gem of a book in the philosophy section of a back street book shop in Kuala Lumpur. It was titled How to be Idle. It opened my eyes to a rich array of writings on the subject of idleness and the art of being a successful loafer. Previously, I had felt very isolated and lonely in my unfortunate and unnatural predilection for idleness.
There is a rich tapestry of successful loafers throughout history. These include classical figures such as Socrates and Diogenes through Montainge to Oscar Wilde. Even the great philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote a script on the subject of idleness.
I am writing this in a cafe in K Rd, Auckland. I have no particular schedule for the afternoon. I might quaff a beer along the road at the Thirsty Dog then stroll slowly over to Sandringham, to visit my elderly father at his rest-home. Having no fixed schedule, no list of duties and ample time in which not to do them is very liberating.
We live in an age that celebrates busyness. We are constantly urged to take our jobs and ourselves very seriously. To strive for the competitive edge. To be perceived as a slacker is regarded as a moral sin. A failure to buy into the collective delusion that haste and busyness are essential to a good life. That time spent slouching, mooching and thinking is somehow a sinful wasteful practice. We have become obsessed with the cult of productivity and efficiency. Wasting time is an affront in the urgent quest to "get ahead in life".
I am slightly wary of people who are always very busy. Rather than emphasising their importance I wonder if it implies an unfortunate inability to say "no". A life of constant engagements and urgent busyness seems toxic and stressful to those of us who are natural slackers. It is the antithesis to a slacker’s idea of a good life.
When I visit my father at the rest-home, it is interesting to note that at the end of very lengthy lives, the strivers and slackers have all ended up in the same place, with the same material comforts. I may give that a bit more thought over a slow beer at the Thirsty Dog before I slowly wander home.
- Peter Lyons teaches at Saint Peter’s College in Epsom, Auckland.
