On productivity and wasting time

by Ying Ying

It’s been months that I’ve been holing up like a mole, coming out of my hideout only when I deem it necessary. It’s been unhealthy, but there’s still a silent kind of purpose underlying it all. It’s my quiet time, and I just can’t have enough of it.

I can say I’m wasting time, wasting my life away, not doing anything ‘productive’, by measures of society’s typical expectations. I am not working, nor studying. I am purely doing what I want to do each day with no planning ahead, no drive nor rush to complete certain tasks.

But that’s not to say that goals are non existent in the vision. I still see them, they lay ahead of me.

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” – John Lennon

And that is apt, for all the quiet time spent is spent with the intangibles, the things that go on in our minds, questioning and seeking answers and questioning again, things that would not have been done should I be busy with my life.

I came across this article by Joel Lovell with George Saunders’s convocation speech where he gives advice to graduating students, and tells them how learning to be kind can and should be one of the goals in life. He then proceeds to sum up the speech and his reason behind advocating kindness, with a more purposeful reason:

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up.  Speed it along.  Start right now.  There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness.  But there’s also a cure.  So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.  Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.  That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been.  Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s.  Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

That last sentence in bold right there is like a validation of the phase I’m in. Call it an excuse, or not, but to “believe it exists” and to “come to know it better” is like taking a leap of faith, which of course required some time. 

I hope there will be someone equally wise at my graduation to share the same kind of wisdom. I hope that person can remind me then, and all the other students, of what life can be if you let it.