Back in the late nineties, long before meeting Fanta I found myself romantically involved with another woman. She wasn’t bad and had many virtues but to use that ghastly right-wing expression, she was literally a layabout who often spent vast swathes of the day lying in bed. It almost seemed a badge of pride for her just how long she had spent cocooned away from the world. Now I’m not going to say any more about her as my abiding emotion concerning her is one of compassionate sadness that I never managed to motivate her to rise out of bed and face the real world. It was however a blessed relief to me to discover that Fanta acknowledged that such a lifestyle would have personally driven her crazy.
Yet since the passing away of Fanta, it may not come as a surprise to you dear reader to discover that I have been burning the candle at both ends what with the administrative nightmare left behind as well as the practicalities of readjusting my life to a nonsighted paradigm. These days it’s pretty well unheard of for me to be in bed before midnight and often I turn in well after the Witching Hour.
Now often when I have spoken to people, they have said, sometimes with genuine and sincere concern, that it’s good to be busy. Indeed the idea of doing nothing is all too often rather frowned upon. Yet it struck me one morning well after 1am when I had been especially busy that day that in fact well intentioned as such sentiments may be, they are most emphatically mistaken. The danger of physical inaction of course is of becoming like that former girlfriend – ruminating on the past and future and becoming almost insanely possessive of the little that one has as a consequence. Yet it struck me that whatever she was doing, it was most certainly not ‘nothing’. Her body was inactive but her mind most certainly was not. Her thoughts may have been rather less deep than those of Rene Descartes but what those folks both share in consequence is that they were most certainly not at rest.
Yet I have to believe that there is a middle position somewhere between working my body into the grave and my mischievous mind pushing me toward the latter hole. It strikes me that of course activity is to be encouraged but that it is just as important to have an ‘off’ switch and to know my limitations. Being busy, meaning having just a little too much to do, makes it very hard to be present in the moment and that in turn impedes effectiveness. So I don’t know whether I’d have the nerve to reply ‘no it isn’t’ next time someone tells me that it’s good to be busy, but I did find myself thinking about that little insight the following morning over breakfast, turning off the radio and trying a little mono-tasking.
shaggy beast of thought 