It’s a Sunday night. I’ve been sitting at my computer for more hours than I care to recall. I stand up. I walk over and open the fridge. Nothing inside. The sight discomforts me, so I go to the local supermarket to find something to put inside it. I walk the aisles and visualize all of the shelved items chilling out in my white box. Nothing seems necessary to me. I buy a bottle of water and some milk and go back. I realize that what I need is not a lot of stuff to put inside my fridge but really just a smaller fridge. Milk, butter and some cans of drink would fill it and I’d feel better.
Then I recoil in horror. What am I doing? I’m worried about my fridge. Why should I even bother with nonsense like this. In the grand scheme of things, the contents of a certain cold place ain’t going to play a large role. Besides, I eat out every day and I like it that way. However it got me thinking. How necessary was anything I had done that day? I pondered it hard.
There was the morning. Always my least favorite of the various segments of the day. To me, mornings always move too fast, or I move too slow. I try to get myself together, but what with the shower, breakfast, clothing and stumbling around in a daze, I find that I just can’t be ready in any reasonable time. I’ve found that I just can’t break that hour or so of dead time where I prepare myself to face the world. Just thinking about it makes me want to hide under my doona again. On this particular day I had woken late, around 11:30 and so breakfast had to become lunch, and lunch had to be eaten out because there was nothing in my fridge that could reasonably be eaten. So I had gone out, ordered and spent another hour of dead time filling my stomach.
To me, eating has always been something of a pain. There’s the finding of the food, the preparing of the food, the actual eating of the food and then there’s the cleaning up. It’s all just too much trouble. Give me a pill of nutrition and I’ll show you a happy Dave. This is the reason I eat out. It simplifies all of the stages of the consumption process. You find the restaurant and the item on the menu, prepare it by telling the waiter or waitress what you want, eat it (not much of a change there) and then feel bad for whoever is washing up. If you ask me, this is still far too much time wasted on eating.
Then there was the rest of the day, during which I stared at the computer. Don’t ask me what I was doing. It’s not because I don’t want to tell you, it’s just because I don’t remember exactly what it was. At the time it was quite interesting. There was that video of a guy playing the piano and drums at the same time, but edited together in a process known as still motion video. That was funny. Then I must’ve watched a TV show, yes I think that was it. The rest, well, that was a blur. Looking back, I wonder why I chose to throw away those hours of my life. But not just those hours. What about all those TV shows, movies and games. I have no skills or knowledge from them which will do me any good. Was I just putting off living for all those hours. I’ve watched 24 seasons 1,2,3 and 4. That’s 4 whole days gone on just one TV show! I stopped thinking about it for fear of falling to the floor in despair.
Was I covering up my boredom by filling my time with meaningless stuff? Yes, I think I was. But if that was really true, then what meaningful thing might I do with this time? Were I Leonardo Da Vinci, I might paint a portrait or invent a new machine or study the inner workings of the human body. Not wanting to go to extremes, I thought of something more real-world, something more like my own life. I might work on a new design for my website or write a new blog entry. Surely though, this is just wasting time in a different way. It’s creatively wasting time. I suppose creative wasting is better than inactive, passive wasting. But what about creatively finding new ways to waste your time? Someone might just say that you were sitting around in your underwear watching movies all day but what you’re really doing is “studying the literary styles that the writer has used to craft the work”. Your mum tells you that it’s about time you stopped wasting time on “that stupid YouTube site”, tell her to hold off on that judgment. What you’re really doing is “analyzing” pop culture and social trends which influence the culture of tomorrow. When someone complains that you have seen the same news item three times in a day and feverishly check your social news bookmarking sites like a junkie, tell them you’re just “keeping yourself informed” of the latest in world developments. And of course, when your wife or girlfriend complains that you drink every night and come home stinking of booze at 3 in the morning, well you’re just “socializing” with friends aren’t you?
I called my friend.
“Hey, what do you do when you aren’t working or studying or eating…. or showering or traveling somewhere?” I said.
“Uh David? Is that you?”
“Yes it’s me. So what do you do?”
“Uh, I guess I watch TV or meet my friends…”
“Ah-ha! A waste of life!”. I said and hung up.
Not satisfied with just one, I called another friend and delivered the same question.
“Um…” came the reply.
“Come on! And not TV or friends, I’ve already had those two.”
“I play with my dog.”
“Pah! A meaningless waste of affection!”
Next… “I write poetry”
Ha! A self-indulgent waste of paper, worse for the pain it will inflict upon it’s eventual reader.
Next… “I like to shop”
Consuming in a mindless attempt to avoid looking at the advent of your death.
Next… “I started a company in my spare time and made myself a millionaire”
Gimme a break! That’s just work. I said not work!!!
At this point I ran out of friends who would submit to my interrogation. But that was fine because I had my answer. Everyone wastes time. Well, ok, some people don’t and make money from their efforts, but mostly everyone does at some point. You might think that you’re productive and don’t have time to waste, but it will get you in the end. You’ll give in, you’ll see a movie, you’ll read an article that isn’t completely relevant to your end-goal and that will be it, a downward spiral of use and abuse as the hours turn into days and you blindly hide away from the fact that you are in fact throwing your life away until you’re just a quivering heap of consumption, lying on the floor.
And as you pick yourself up and check your empty fridge for the fifth time that day, you won’t worry because you know that deep down, everybody does it. Even if no-one will admit it.
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