Waste time this year. Go for long, rambling walks. Write poems. Try a new recipe just because. Pray. Paint. Knit something. Read that big old book. Work on your novel. Our world is obsessed with productivity, but "unproductive" hours are the most soul-shaping parts of our lives.
-Joy Clarkson
Everywhere you look folks are running themselves ragged. Busyness consumes the lives of most. Productivity is encouraged and considered true success. People are going a hundred miles a minute. And yet their lives are unfulfilling, stressful, complicated, and all pleasure, happiness and contentment have been sucked out right up from under them.
Growing up, I had the opportunity to be a child, to fully live into my childhood. Instead of being whisked around from this extracurricular activity or sporting event to the next one, afternoons and evenings during the school year were filled with nearly all of my time outdoors. My sister and I, along with our friends, would put our imaginations together and create a world in which the woods behind our house was a forest and we would seek out the wild animals. I vividly remember jumping on a trampoline in my neighbor friend's backyard and as we were jump, jump, jumping, we were putting all our plans together...because in our minds we were spies. My friend and I were twin spies, and my sister was the puppy. (Lucky being the youngest, you know. You end up being the dog!) On rainy days or when the heat was too much to bear, we'd play indoors...couch cushions would become a fort or even an RV, closets would become secret hide-outs and then there was always playing school.
Summers were filled with the same sort of delightful, imaginative play. We'd also go to parks and walk barefoot through streams and creeks near the library after we'd picked out a stack of books. Zoo visits were plentiful and then, of course, we'd come home and create a pretend zoo right in our backyard. I am grateful for my childhood and that even though it was at the cusp of technology becoming more and more popular and eventually robbing children of proper childhoods, my childhood was rich and full and fun.
Some might suggest that my childhood was wasted. I'd beg to disagree.
As I've moved into adulthood, I've chosen to keep simplicity and real living as part of my life. I know the richness of real, face-to-face, heart-to-heart conversation, the blessing of family dinner and the simple pleasure that comes from reading real books, listening to good music, and enjoying a quiet, slow-paced walk through nature.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that contentment, real peace, true joy and happiness, and lasting fulfillment will be known again once folks start wasting time again. It's truly a sad thing that the simple things in life have come to be seen as a waste of time. Discontentment is at an all-time high. More people are unhappy, stressed out and feeling unfulfilled than ever before. Busyness is glorified and being a hustler is applauded.
Wasting time is life-giving, soul-filling, and heart-lightening. Busyness, complicated living, always being stressed out, constantly discontent, never knowing peace, and hustling round-the-clock aren't going to result in an abundant life.
Friend, the abundant life is found in wasting time...
Slowing down to actually go to the grocery store and pick up fresh ingredients (too many folks are too busy to even do something as simple and ordinary as grocery shopping), then come home and cook a homecooked meal, sit down with your family at the dinner table, have a real conversation- phones and all electronic devices out of sight-, that lasts long after the last dish has been cleared, that's wasting time that gives life, love and laughter to your body and home.
Putting on your rainboots and grabbing your favorite umbrella and going for a walk in the rain. A couple of years ago, I saw a wonderful woman on Instagram who is in her fifties give everyone a challenge: the next time it rained, go out and jump in a puddle. She encouraged that no matter how stupid you thought it would look, how silly you felt, or how weird others would look at you, just go out there and do it. And you know, it was the most delightful thing to see all these posts popping up on Instagram of these no-longer-a-child folks jumping and splashing in puddles...every single one had joy sprinkled all over their faces as they giggled with sheer delight and bliss. Wasting time, I think not! You can bet that day was a bit more cheerful and magical for those people because of that one small act.
Go on a walk...slow and quiet. Don't pay attention to your number of steps or how far you go. Just walk and notice everything around you. Take in the scent of the air. Soak in the beauty of creation as it enfolds you. Leave the earbuds at home and listen to the sounds...birdsong, leaves rustling, airplanes flying overhead, the wind gently whispering around the trees, dogs barking, maybe even people talking.
Sit on your front porch, and if you don't have a porch large enough for a chair, that's no excuse. Just grab a chair, put it out on your grass, sidewalk or driveway, and just let the earth fill you with her goodness. My Grandpa would call this "shooting the breeze". He grew up in the Great Depression and didn't have all the million and one things pulling at him like folks do today. Life back then was simple and perhaps they wasted a lot of time in the olden days...sitting and chatting and reading and walking in nature and just doing simple things. But he knew a richness that most today would be hard-pressed to find.
Read a real book for no other purpose than enjoyment and pleasure. Heck, write a book, why don't you? Listen to some good music that fills you to the bones with magical bliss and transports you to another place. Bake a batch of cookies. Journal or craft...knit, crochet, paint, sew. Write an old-fashioned letter to a friend or family member. Brew a pot of tea and serve it in real teacups. Get the flour out a bake a loaf of homemade bread...better yet, bake two. One to keep and one to share with a neighbor. Dust off that old deck of cards and rediscover those games that you once loved. Get out your real camera, take a stroll through your garden, and take photos of every pretty thing that you see. I guarantee you that you'll find more than you think! Do something that is simply good for your soul and is lifegiving. Something that has nothing to do with being productive or furthering whatever it is you're trying to build or with making money.
People are hungering for something. In fact, they're starving for it. The thing is, they have absolutely no idea what "it" is. So much of their lives are spent staring at a screen of some sort, constantly going somewhere, hustling about, being seemingly productive. Always busy. Lives full to the brim. Yet they feel as empty as ever. Abundant living feels foreign and true contentment and lasting fulfillment seems unattainable. The thing is that they aren't filling their souls. The very things that are filling their lives are sucking all meaning, happiness and worth right out of it. Wasting time is where abundant living is found.
Children are some of the wisest people in the entire world. And yet, they are often cast aside or not seen as worthy of opinions or the ability to teach or share something with someone simply because they are young. But I firmly believe that children have way more to teach us than any adult could ever teach them. Too often adults talk to children like they are stupid or not-quite-human-yet or with a superior attitude or tone simply because they are older. When we acknowledge that children are humans, too, which most people tend to forget...that they deserve respect and don't need to be treated less than because of their age, then I really believe that we will reap so many benefits. Our lives will be so much richer, and we will learn more than we thought possible. There is also a lot to be said for adults who want to be more childlike and return to their boyhood or girlhood wonder and curiosity and capacity for learning, growing, and simply appreciating.
There is really so much more I could say about this, and heaps more I truly, firmly believe on this topic. But that gets into the widely controversial topic of what childhood should look like, how to raise children, and on education and schooling...all topics that you can bet I have solid opinions on, but those opinions tend to be very unconventional and not in line with most of society's norm, whether it be secular society or religious society. I believe with all my heart that both sides of that coin are screwing up bit time, in some shared ways and in other ways that differ. Let's just say that gentleness, compassion, respect, kindness, equality, the removal of hierarchy and authoritarian-like parenting would make for some much kinder, gentle, compassionate, respectful and respectable adults. Harshness gets no one anywhere good or positive. And yet most parents I've seen, especially in religious circles, are horribly heartless, harsh, disrespectful and we sit here and wonder why the world isn't full of kinder people. Anyway....
Children naturally have such a simplicity about them. That is until adults steal it away from them. It's perfectly fine to be this way until they reach a certain age, then it's time to "grow up" and "mature". And in reality, those two phrases destroy children's wonder, curiosity, ability to think for themselves, and to be dazzled by life. And it is awfully hard to get those things back as an adult. They are pleased with the wonder of a dandelion while most adults think of dandelions as nature's weed. Take this quote from C.S. Lewis as a token of wisdom to accompany you today...
"Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence, they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C.S. Lewis
Wasting time is a lost art, but oh, how it is one that needs to be recovered. Will you be one of the few that knows the richness of time well wasted? I sure hope so...you will be blessed for it. You will know the abundant life in all its abundance and glory and wonder.
For most of us, the way we will most effectively change the world is through how we approach our home and family life.
-Haley Stewart