sitting still

I can't believe how starved I am for time to do nothing.

Not time to sleep, or read, or pray, or think about what I need to do this weekend or what I need to pick up at the grocery store. Not that I don't want time to do all of those things too; I just want more time on top of that. Time to sit and look out the window. Time to sit and not get anything done. Time to do nothing.

This is something that happens a lot in Madagascar, and, I surmise, in much of the non-Western world. People work fewer hours in the week at their jobs. Things take longer to do (getting places, household chores, etc.), but there are more hours in the day when you don't spend all your time rushing from one thing to the next. Nobody is bored (I never learned how to say "bored" in Malagasy - it's just not a widely-discussed concept) and nobody needs stimulation surrounding them every minute of every day. The TV isn't always on because it can't be, and the Internet is... wait, what's that? There are no viral Youtube videos to watch, and no statuses need to be updated. When we're away from constant stimulation, we're bored out of our minds in a matter of minutes. When a Malagasy person, even a Malagasy child, doesn't have anything to do, it seems like they usually appreciate a few minutes away from hard work, a few minutes to step back and not really do anything.

I miss that. I know, I miss a lot of things. I think it's healthy though. The frenetic pace of the average American urban or suburban life can't be healthy, and I think we would do well to break our dependence on stimulation, on getting things done constantly. Most Americans I know who have lived in a place like Madagascar had a lot of trouble with the slow pace of life, often frustratingly slow and inefficient. It's difficult to get to a place where you've set out to change the world, or the community at the very least, and realize that there's so much time in the day for sitting and staring at the wall, not to be confused with the 10 hours a night that you spend sleeping, the several hours a day you spend reading, the time you spend shooting the breeze with the neighbors, etc. But I came to depend on it. Maybe it's introversion, maybe it's laziness (did I just call introverts lazy? I didn't mean it); maybe it's a healthier way to live. Maybe we have a thing or two to learn, in our culture in which it's completely normal for me to spend 9 and a half hours a day at work, 3 hours commuting, 7 sleeping, and... what does that leave? Four or so? I don't know where those four hours go but I sure don't have much of a chance to use them to not do anything.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find this time in American culture? The weekends are when I have the most free time, but if I decide today, Thursday night, that I want some totally free and unscheduled time this weekend, I'll inevitably either use it to get things done that I need to do, like actually apply to grad school, or I'll end up committing to something - something fun, something I want to do, but clearly nobody says, "Oh, I can't make it, I was planning to sit and stare at the wall from 2 to 3 on Saturday afternoon!"

Is this a problem? I don't know. Is it something we would do well to consider? Probably. Most Americans I know, including myself through 2007, would go crazy if they tried to spend any time actually not doing anything. But Malagasy life rubbed off on me, and there were plenty of times when I would finish eating dinner and, intending to sit down with a book, spend a few minutes first just sitting, enjoying the free time and the cool air after finally having turned off the stove with the windows shut against mosquitoes. Or the afternoons I'd spend out on my front step, my favorite place in my house, mostly enclosed in my yard's fence so I didn't have huge crowds stopping by, but sitting where I could just see out into the street and be seen by people walking by, who'd often wave a hello and continue any an-tsena. I'd often go to the market, bring back my full bag (mitondra matavy an!), and grab some little street food item as a pre-dinner snack on my way back, then not even make it in my door before I'd sit on the steps for a few minutes, eating my snack and just sitting as the sun set behind me. Laziness and sloth? My culture would say yes. Mahafinaratra/beautiful? Malagasy culture would say yes.

One of these weekends...