I've been thinking about doing something for no good reason at all.
I was awake at dawn one weekend morning and heard the newspapers land on the porch of our town house. My first drowsy thoughts were, I could retrieve them, make myself a cup of coffee and get a vigorous start to the day: check the scores of games that were still going on when I fell asleep early last night; grimace through reports on the terror in Ukraine; read the comics, which is where I usually begin on a Sunday. Or maybe, if I closed my eyes, I could fall asleep for another hour. After a few more sleepless minutes I thought, if I were really disciplined I could walk before the sun delivers this morning’s Spring heat. So many useful and productive options.
What I did, in fact, was fold my hands behind my head on the pillow, stare at the ceiling and for an hour lay in the quiet thinking about . . . well, thinking about nothing much beyond how thoroughly I was enjoying the pleasure of lying in my warm bed. After an hour, the whispers began again: You’re wasting precious time. You could be catching up on the news. A walk would be good for you.
And then the real zinger: Lying here is just so useless and unproductive.
My close friend and mother of my three god-children has always jarred my instinct toward productivity. Whenever I call to ask about her and the kids, she’s slow to answer the phone, as if she’s screening her calls, waiting for a worthy name to appear. When she finally picks up, I quickly ask, Am I interrupting? Are you busy? Often this is her reply: I’ve got an iced tea on the table beside me, and for forty minutes I’ve been sitting here petting my dogs.
Just for the pleasure of it. Not to learn or create something. Not to improve her health. Not to nourish her relationships. Petting her dogs because she and the dogs enjoy it. Period.
All of us share a national script that helps us measure our productivity. I remembered the first time I read John Irving’s novel, The Cider House Rules, in which Doctor Larch is constantly reminding his protégé, Homer Wells, to be of use. These three words are tattooed in my conscience from growing up in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Be of use. Redeem the time. Don’t be such a slug.
It’s as if doing something for no good reason at all, doing something purely for the pleasure of it – like lying in bed for an hour staring at the ceiling or petting your dogs – is a sin against God and our national interest.
This sensibility begins in earnest when we first go to school and run into grades and narrative evaluations. I remember my first encounter with the pain of being judged. I was in my second-grade reading circle, one of three distinct groups. You were either in Group A, Group B, or Group C, the import of which every student knew, especially those in Group C.
I don’t remember which group I was in, but seventy-three years later I still carry traces of shame from mispronouncing the word cement. Reading out loud, I pronounced it kement. My teacher, Ms. Bob, said, Try again, Rickey. Which I did: kement. She rescued me by pronouncing it correctly; still, I remember my seven-year-old flushed cheeks and my classmates’ pitying smiles at my demonstrative stupidity. The rigor of expectations doesn't view mistakes as a helpful and natural part of learning, but as a personal failing. Try harder. Do more. Don't be stupid.
Later in life, the question is, And where are you going to college? (which can be very awkward if you’ve chosen not to go). And then there’s this: what’s your major? You’re on solid ground if you’re pre-med or in finance or any shade of engineering, or in poly-sci on your way to law school - the Group A of life choices. But it you say Philosophy, or English Lit, you can intuit the next question, whether or not it's spoken: And what are you going to do with that?
You and I both know what they mean: How will you monetize Philosophy or English Lit, because in our current culture that’s the defining value: money. Making it, increasing it, spending it. The implied message is that if you don't focus on making money, you should fear the judgement of your peers and your parents, who measure your worth by your income and your job title. But you should also legitimately fear the plight of being unable to survive a society in which a certain level of financial security is the ticket to healthcare, to food, to shelter, and to adequate housing. Money creates this confusion for us.
So perhaps it's not surprising when we measure our worth by our income or by what we buy or by the zip code we live in or by how often and how far we travel. The idea of majoring in Philosophy because you’re interested in how people reason, or in English Lit because you love getting lost in stories seems like a risky proposition. For too many of us, what we earn and what we buy is akin to how many Likes we generate on FaceBook: it’s how we measure our value.
Before the massive Getty Museum opened in Los Angeles in 1997, much of the collection was housed in the Getty Villa near the beach in Pacific Palisades. On my first visit many years ago, I came up a stairway to the second floor, turned right and saw, facing me at the end of a long hallway, one of the many paintings Vincent van Gogh did of irises.
A sea of swirling green stems rises out of dense dark earth and blossoms into dozens of that purple-blue that is the flower’s signature color. Near the left edge of the garden is one white iris, the renegade in this otherwise balanced and glorious bouquet. I walked toward the painting, unaware in the moment that it commanded a reverence evident in my slow pace and my still and focused mind. The closer I got the more the renegade faded into the stunning colors and subtle movement of the plants, a mesmerizing vision of something beyond flowers, something that I now know, from several experiences with the painting, is the wonder of something truly beautiful.
I treasure this memory for no good reason except the continuing pleasure it brings me. The delight in my mind's eye. The simple, sacred joy of it. I neither can nor want to monetize that joy, nor am I interested in translating the beauty of the painting into something useful or productive.
When her parents named our now-nine-year-old granddaughter Iris, we began a collection of paintings, posters and photos of irises that hang in our homes and offices, a reminder not only of this girl we love like breathing but also of van Gogh’s art and the radiance of this particular flower. My current favorite is a photo of a Wild Iris, which captures not only the flower’s splendor but also our granddaughter’s curious wit and sheer delight in teasing her aging grandfather: you’re old, and you don’t have any hair. It’s framed on a tabletop in the entrance to my office at work. It gives me pleasure every morning.
I respect Dr. Larch’s charge to be of use, and I spend a great deal of my time implementing that. Still, the glory of an Iris is not something to be monetized - it has worth in and of itself. I want to create a world, for myself and others, where there are moments when it's appropriate to say, To hell with being productive, and settle into doing something – or nothing – for no good reason at all.
Blessings,
Rick
Hi, I’m Rick Thyne and I’m grateful that you found your way to these pages. Perhaps in these conversations we’ll find our way to more of the common good that is - for me - our best hope for a future in which all of us thrive. If you've found this column and would like to get my latest column delivered, free, to your inbox every two weeks, you can subscribe now.