The lazy mind

 

Subject: The lazy mind

So the clocks are going back this morning and one has to ask why all the disturbance, why all the modification to that staple, time. Of course it’s not time that changes only our sense of what the time is and our place in it. Our observance of time, like our observance of the weather nears that of a fetish, we seem obsessed by it because we are a people of appointments and repetition, we are coming away from or hurrying to attend an appointment. We worry about the time spent in between appointments as being non productive, stuck in a journey between here and there.

Bloody meetings, formal gatherings where minutes are kept of words and jobs held up because of them. Time encapsulated on paper, so many weeks to complete and then move on to another project, constant movement, constant watch checking and all the while, time is running out for each of us individually. A life spent running to plan but someone else’s plan for someone else’s benefit.  Would we be better off if it were not so, could we contrive to make it better or would we simply stay in bed.

Of course staying in bed has its allure, the simple waste of time is attractive if we can get over our sense of self importance and the desire to be needed elsewhere. Not being needed is a special condition which comes about when we grow old. The children don’t need us anymore, our work colleagues have forgotten us almost as the going- away watch is handed over and people disperse to continue their busy lives leaving you stranded, with only time on your hands. We maybe finish those DIY jobs or take a rrip up to Northumbria. We go on walks and watch the busy people pulling out of their driveways doing much of what made us feel important.  We can buy a dog and enter innumerable  conversation with it and other dog walkers or we can stay in bed.

The gratitude we receive doing nothing is rare, the assumption is that your lazy but then why frown on the lazy after a lifetime of being busy especially when you are forced to artificially invent things to do. The days of the week loose their importance, except if you still follow sport. Monday morning loose there dread, the traffic is a distant roar on the motorway and all those busy meetings are attended, perfectly well without you.

Laziness is a condition of the mind as well as the body and a lazy mind, free to roam is a wonderful thing