Coming from a dysfunctional family has its advantages, and my peculiar childhood prepared me for most of life's dissapointments. I learned very early in life to be self contained, knowing that the vast majority of people can only be relied upon to let you down. People say that I am a pessimist but I disagree. I prefer to think of myself as being a pragmatist or a realist. However none of that matters to anyone but myself and is not what I intended to write about. I was thinking about growing up with my overbearing father who, would never allow us to waste any time. If we were sitting around doing nothing, we were committing a sin, though that is a word he'd never use. We had to be occupied all of the time. Only he was allowed to fall asleep in front of the TV because only he was in need of resting his eyes. We were expected to be up early and actively doing something all of the day until sent to bed. I suppose it was a clever way of getting us out of the house because it worked.
Wasting time is a strange idea and means different things to different people. Many have a very powerful work ethic and unless they are redecorating the house for the nth time, or cleaning or filling in their time in a practical manner they are very uncomfortable. It is believed by some that kids today waste time sitting in front of computer games or TV, but what choice do they have? Freedom of children has been much curtailed by health and safety regulations as well as the threat of a paedophile on every corner, and so thanks to the media and paranoid parents, kids are kept off the streets and have to find ways of filling their days
Each of us can expect to experience a finite stretch of time and it is up to us how we use that time. It could be said that much of what we do is a waste of time. Cleaning the house, raking leaves, washing, ironing etc are all pretty thankless tasks, all of which need repeating over and over again and yet we still do them. A walk around the block achieves nothing and yet it can be pleasant.
I read a lot and if anything can be costrued as a waste of time it has to be reading novels. Filling our imaginations with other peoples fantasies achieves nothing at all and yet millions of people do it. In the eyes of others the time could be better spent, and perhaps it could but I don't care.
There comes a time in life when one has achieved everything that one is likely to. After that most of what we do is a pretty futile anyway and so whatever we do is self indulgent and of little value to anyone. Ironically, the less purpose one has the longer the days seem to be while the years seem to vanish like the last grain in the hourglass. Friends either pass away or pass on and we sit back on the timeline in anticipation of hitting the buffers.
My father spent his last years doing nothing. He'd sit in his chair, staring out of the window, read a book or vanish into his bedroom to drown himself is whisky and loud music probably ruing the life that he has misspent. He had never travelled of his own volition, never seen a live concert or visited an art gallery of the theatre. He's never driven a car or enjoyed the love and respect of his children or grandchildren. When I think that I am wasting time, and i do so a lot, I think of him and what he missed in his life, and as I approach the age when he died, and his father before him, I hope that at least some of my time has been well spent.
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