A disclaimer before I start: This post has nothing to do with the title. So anyone looking for Greenday’s lyrics or expecting to read about the benefits of sleeping through September can stop right here and go back to whatever you were previously doing. Regular readers of this blog (At the last count 3), might have noticed that lately the updates are as frequent as Rohit Sharma scoring centuries. It’s mostly because I have been pretty swamped (A term popularly used in the corporate world when you are inundated with work and have no time to think about anything else .. or something like that). Its strange, when I look around , everyone is as busy (If not more) as me. You ask anyone how they are doing and they will immediately tell you that they are “very busy”/”Super swamped”/”so busy that I sometimes even forget to breathe”. The surprising part is that none of them are lying , they are almost at all times tied up doing something or the other , be it working , studying at college , preparing for competitive exams or involved in something that takes up their time and the funny part is , most of the time its done willingly and voluntarily. We have been taught that its good to be busy ,the premise for this is “ If you aren’t busy doing something worthwhile , you are pretty much a waste of space.” As per the premise, nothing differentiates you from that homeless bum whose only purpose in life is to sleep or scavenge for meals if you aren’t seen to be busy. You are made to feel guilty if you are lazing around or doing something which isn’t considered worthwhile(What can be considered as worthwhile is another topic to explore). Now I question this premise , not because I am an argumentative Indian , but because I think the premise is flawed.
An idle mind is a devils workshop might have been one of the first idioms that I learnt. Now , my first ever post was about Type B personality , people with a stronger right brain who tend to be more creative. The above premise creates a paradox for creativity . World history has been littered with examples of how idleness led to creativity. For example , the theory of gravity was invented/discovered (for lack of a better word) by Newton when he was sitting idle under an apple tree and the Archimedes principle was invented when Archimedes was soaking up in a bath tub. Do you think Da Vinci could have painted those beautiful paintings if he had a 70 hour per week job or could Tolkien have written his masterpiece Lord of the Rings if he had to juggle GMAT classes , gym sessions , work and social obligations?
I have a 9 year old cousin who has something set to do from the time she gets up until she goes to sleep. School , singing classes , dance classes , home work take up all of her waking hours. When I was a kid , apart from school and violin class , I had atleast a couple of hours of idle time which was used for playing in the mud, dreaming , watching cartoons, painting , reading comics, wrestling with my younger brother or thinking of new games to play with the neighborhood kids. Those couple of hours everyday defined childhood for me and also laid the bricks for thinking out of the box and not following a set pattern. These days kids follow a pattern , a pattern chosen by their parents in the belief that they are preparing their kids for the real world. A world which is competitive and scary. Now I am not qualified to talk about paedology nor am I a psychology major, but my gut says that all that they are doing is fine tuning their kids to become competitive logic driven machines rather than an emotional human being who is taught to care , emote or see the lighter side of the world.
There are three things I absolutely love to do , reading books , listening to music and painting . Its been ages since I have got to do any of them whole heartedly , because I haven’t found time . I am guilty as sin in acting busy all the time and Its not just me , most of my friends don’t have the time to indulge in things which they really want to do because they have voluntarily made themselves unavailable. I am not saying stop what you are doing and start lazing around all day but rather give yourself some time to be idle , for retrospection , to look at the stars and play connect the dots , to paint , read, write , to meet your friends or do absolutely anything which makes you happy. At the end of the day , you wouldn’t regret not being busy , but you will definitely regret not doing things you love or not being able to spend enough time with the people you love.
I am going to go into idle mode this month. Wake me up .. When September ends.
Image courtesy: Google Images
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