blog nine
As a good Jewish boy, I was raised to believe that I should spend my time doing things that are productive and relevant.
I should be a mensch. There should always be a goal. Doing something just because it feels good is not good enough. Guilt is a very powerful thing. It often looks just like my mother.
Fun is not a word I associate with my Jewish upbringing. Life, I learned, was not an amusement park. How could it be when my people lived through the Holocaust.
Hebrew School and high holiday and Shabbat services were not something I ran to. They were the places I wanted to flee from, places I had to be while the rest of the young people around the world were playing baseball.
I want to eat bacon sandwiches between slices of pork and shrimp and washed down with milk. I want to have ice cream immediately after a steak dinner. Anyone who knows about kosher laws knows exactly what I’m talking about and probably agrees 100 percent.
This forced-furlough is difficult. I have a lot of time on my hands and I have to deal with those voices that tell me that I should not be idle but that I should be doing things that are worthwhile and not frivolous.
Aversion to idleness is embedded in the Torah. “For thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands, happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.” (Psalms 128, 2).
And everyone knows that idle time is the devil’s playground or that idle hands is the devils workshop. You can check it out in Proverbs 19:15, “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep and an idle person will suffer hunger.”
And Timothy 5:13 intones, “Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.”
Fine, I will be slothful and an idle busybody if it feels good.
Idling is how the engine renews its power. But it clashes with my belief that anything done out of pure self-satisfaction is selfish and bad. It’s a form of mental masturbation defined as “The act of engaging in useless yet intellectually stimulating conversation, usually as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in your life.” I like how that sounds.
I hear the words, “Why are you wasting so much time? Get up and do something worthwhile.”
Yes, I long to be selfish and to kick those ghosts of guilt out of my mind. Selfish means taking care of myself but it doesn’t mean lacking consideration for others or being concerned chiefly with my own pleasure. Or maybe it does.
Being selfish is only natural. We all start as selfish babies. It has to be that way. Imagine if the baby told his mother, “OK you’re tired and I can wait until tomorrow to eat” or “don’t worry about this dirty diaper, I know you want to watch TV.”
Selfish is about returning to that place where the world was my oyster and revolved around me, if just for a little while.
I’ve always thought that art and sports are things to consider after I’ve done my work. They are not primary concerns but rather more about idle gluttony and the unneeded icing on the cake. I think I was wrong; they are the cake.
That’s why I’ve been reading about baseball, the Italian Renaissance and the symbolism in paintings by Hieronymus Bosch.
It’s not like I want to spend my life in silent contemplation. But a little silent contemplation is a definitely good thing. Thinking and learning are not wasted time.
And now, for a few idle words from the great Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.”
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”