March 10, 2005
In Defense of Doing Nothing
Well, now I'm going to post something that has been quietly ruminating in my mind for a very long time and has actively been ruminating there for a couple of days now. I'm going to try to write quickly, because midnight is less than half an hour away, and I want to post this before midnight. The real reason for that is rather silly - I like the current design of hyperlinks on my calendar, and if I miss posting today, the design will be screwed up. Besides, posting every other day seems to be a pretty good idea.
As the title of this post says, I am posting in defense of doing nothing. I feel the need to make this post because I think that our society and culture and world puts an enormous, insupportable amount of pressure on us to perform and to do. As I said recently in our Capstone II course, I feel a pressure to justify every waking minute. I feel a constant, subtle urging to always be working. And it isn't just from our secular world, either. No, our Christian world is just as bad, if not worse! They bring guilt into the equation, where you're failing God if you're not earnestly urgently serving Him every single moment of every single day.
Yes, I know that life and time is precious. I've read the warnings against slacking and the praise of the hardworking. But I don't think I want to live in a world that has no place for reading Calvin and Hobbes, or for devouring science fiction for the pleasure of it, or for doing nothing at all. Granted, all of us engage in these activities, whether or not they're sanctioned by our culture. But whenever I do these things, I always feel the pressure from the back of my mind that I really shouldn't be doing these things, that I should always be about work that matters. And I am fed up with slavery to things that matter.
God and the universe can get along quite well without me. God is not standing up in heaven, wringing his hands and saying that "Daniel isn't working right now, what am I going to do?" Most of the activity that people engage in is worthless. Almost nothing they do matters, seen from a long view. So why sweat? Why run around like a little ant, ceaselessly laboring, when there's nothing permanent gained in it?
This world would be happier if we relaxed and had more fun. Part of me has never grown up - I've never grown out of a desire to have fun. I suppose it always seemed to me that the grown-up world piles on demands upon demands of responsibility and effort, and gives precious little in return. The idea of returning to kindergarten and going back through twelve years of being a child again seems rather attractive.
To some degree, this is an angry post against a world that seems to me to be demanding more effort from me. My reply to the world is "why do you care about my effort? What have I ever gotten from you? What is my reward for working, except more work and survival for another day?"
I think I've said this at least once before, but the idea of doing nothing forever is highly attractive. It's more than that. I guess what I really want is peace. Peace and rest from the constant pressure and reminders of every area of my life that I'm not doing as I should. And I suppose that my refusal to work isn't really going to give me any peace of mind, either. But it is one way of saying to the world "Screw you!" Which is, oddly enough, a great part of what I want to say.
Good night.
