Frivolous Tasks

There is a thin line between being lazy and being contented.  We are to admire the lilies of the feed, but we believe Darwin discovered that the lilies of the field are engaged in constant life and death struggle.  You can sit and admire the flowers in your garden,  but sometimes you must weed.  On the other hand, if all you do is weed and never admire, what is the point of it all?

Some things are necessary and some are not.  Ideally, perhaps, half of the time would be spent in enjoying and experiencing what one has, half in striving to improve it or obtain more.  Few in this culture seem to achieve that balance.  A few rich people, of course, manage.  The poor, driven completely by necessity, never have any choice.  But for many, it often seems, envy has overcome good sense.

The mantra for our age is progress, change for the sake of change.  And the mantra for an individual is that time or energy expended should be an “investment”, something worth something in the future.  A better kitchen!  A newer bathroom!  A shinier spirit!  Rush about doing objective things, and you will be rewarded.  But, as the saying goes, what will it profit if you lose your soul in the process?

Most of us die without cashing out on all the so-called “investment”.  A new kitchen becomes old.  The updated spirit encounters new challenges and becomes dispirited.  Investment or expense require time, and time is limited, both in each day and over a lifetime.  It can be wasted as much as dollars, and that waste is not only in sitting around “doing nothing.”

Thinking, meditating, reading, working on a hobby like a musical instrument, these are all profitable enterprises that should never be measured by return on investment.  Oh, perhaps it is useful to pick up a hobby that is profitable in some ways _ tiling floors.  But that is just mechanics.  The main problem given external pressures is that all hobbies tend to be warped into proto-investments, turned into chores, and the joy taken out of them.  It is lovely to take walks in the morning, but grim if the only purpose of that walk is to “do what you have to do and get it over with” to preserve your health.

Advertising pressure makes it far too easy to waste all our time and energy in frivolous tasks.  These not only cause constant anguish from envy and lack of enough resources, but also cause us to lose sight of the real magnificence of the world as it is.  Many things do not need changing, or do not need changing this minute.  Letting them be for a while will give us time to enjoy the universe, and might just lower our destructive footprint on a fragile environment.  A new bathroom is hardly worth missing a spectacular sunset, and the sunset uses a lot less fossil fuel.  The experience of that sunset will always be a unique treasure to you, and may not be coin in the world, but is truly a store in heaven.

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I’m afraid I tend to the side of laziness.  I’m usually quite happy with what exists.  In the long run, everything is transient, so “improving”, unless absolutely necessary, is just makework and an excuse to ignore the pleasures of the day.

There are always a few things that are necessary, of course.  If the roof leaks, it must be fixed.  If one lives in the suburbs, the lawn must be mowed.  If there is no money, I have to work.  The problem is what to do after the minimum, or at least the minimum with a reasonable surplus, is reached.

Some people are always looking for little things to do.  Some of my neighbors and other acquaintances think that a weekend without tiling the bathroom anew or redoing the deck or having a contractor review how to expand the house, is time wasted.  Because of our mania for progress, it seems patriotic.  What made this country great, the myth goes, is that everyone is always striving for something better. 

I’m never really sure anything is all that much better.  I’d rather enjoy as much as I can, get full joy from what is available now, and contemplate the happy mysteries of existence.  Most would call that a decadent European attitude.  I watch them scurry around mostly in wonder, only once in a while with a twinge of envy for their ambition.

Age matters, too.  As an elder, I no longer feel the need, internal or cultural, to constantly improve.  I and my surroundings have improved quite enough, thank you.  It is more a question of maintenance, which I, like most, hated when I was younger.   It has always seemed the core of wisdom that whatever I desire should, first of all, be age appropriate; second of all, possible. 

Anyway, there may be much to do.  My wife certainly thinks so.  I watch the birds and listen to the cicadas and put off as much as I reasonably can until tomorrow.

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Load 16 tons, and whaddaya get

Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.

Some say a man is made out of mud

A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood
The rich get richer and they don’t have to try
Everyone else just tries to get by

Most folks are told that if they work hard

They’ll have a big house and a beautiful yard
Borrow the money and don’t really think
Slave every day, rush and worry and drink.
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You should carefully budget your moments, for time is just as limited as money.  Always trying to make things better instead of simply accepting (and experiencing) them as they are is a fool’s paradise.  You can be so busy trying to improve that you never actually get a chance to notice, and that is a tragedy.

Selecting what are good tasks and what are not is very difficult.  Perhaps improvement is required, perhaps you are driven by necessity, this conversation is not about such issues.  Yet presumably you live in the midst of affluence, and when do you really have to get the latest, greatest; when do you really have to reach perfection to appreciate?  Trust your unconscious in this, if it feels like it’s not worth the effort, it probably isn’t.

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We live in a time of progress and desire.  It is almost a fever, really, a disease of more.  Nothing is ever enough, and we spend so much time dreaming of how good things will be in the future that we miss time going by.  Or we are so bored by being unable to marinate fully in each moment that we drive ourselves to rush on to find something better, to make ourselves earn or discover something that is worthwhile.  And, like riding on an express train, that very rush makes us miss most of the beauty of the landscape.

Some people, of course, handle our times well, and there are disciplines available for all.  Most of them concentrate on contentment, which is good, and seek to root out envy.  Yet too often, the lessons seem disconnected from “real life” when we always must do something, and always should be somehow active to retain our own sense of meaning.

We are, after all, alive, and bound by the conditions of being so.  To pretend we do not need to eat is insane.  To pretend we should not, to some point, seek to eat better, or to more enjoy what we are eating is equally stupid.  The question is not one of finding the lowest possible limit and enjoying it, but rather of understanding the problem of diminishing returns.  At some point, all improvement becomes an awful lot of effort for a really minor gain.  And at that point, and beyond, whatever is being done has become truly trivial.  Finding that point in everything we experience and do is what we must discover in everything to be really happy.

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King Midas had learned to control his gift, so that he only turned what he wanted to into gold.  This let him make as much gold as he wanted while still enjoying his meals, other people, and all the rest of the original issues in the old tragic fable.  So naturally, he became fantastically wealthy, and could buy anything he wanted.  His family romped happily in the fortune.  He was a basically good king, so everyone in his country was taken care of and properly careful.

He had it all.  And for a year or so, that was quite enough.  Whatever he wanted to get done could get done, and most of it was well received.  His kingdom prospered, and he was proud of all that he and his people had accomplished.  Others came from far and wide to admire the land and culture.

But, well, there were some things that didn’t quite work with money.  People still died, he still got a little older, there was still an occasional crime, sometimes the weather was terrible.  The problem, he decided, was that he needed a more perfect world, and he spent infinite time in his secret laboratory, trying to replicate his success in calling up the genie of the gold wish.  Except this time, of course, it was for a genie of power.

And so the years went by, and he got older and more discontented and more driven to find the answer.  The kingdom was doing fine, birds sang and flowers bloomed and love was everywhere, but he could not see it.  The lab was dark and bitter, and he grew to be very like it.

King Midas never found the power genie.  If he had found such a fellow, he would have soon realized that even power was not enough.  What he really needed was a medical genie, who could cure him of his fatal disease of “more.”

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Before doing anything, one should consider not how important it may be, but how trivial it might turn out.   Are any possible returns in the future worth the investment of this exact time?  We are rarely trained to think that way, but perhaps that is a necessary condition of full maturity.