If you had an extra hour every day, how would you spend it?
I think the one thing almost all adults have in common is the feeling that there is never enough time to get everything done that you hoped to. The to-do lists get longer, and the hours get shorter. You wake up, work, and then spend your free time getting ready to go to work again. Somewhere inside, you think, you feel, you know that this isn’t the way it should be, but you look around and everyone is living life like you, and they say nothing at all.
I feel it too, and for years I’ve had the sneaking feeling that we’re all living life backwards. We’ve been taught that our time is owed. Every hour is either one borrowed, one to be paid back, or one bought and paid for either with love or currency. It’s as if your life is already spent, and the feeling only grows more intense and more insistent as you get older. I have less and less to give, but more and more is asked all the time.
When I think about having an extra hour, my first instinct is to spend it on all the work that keeps piling up. I was raised to thrive in a capitalist and individualist society, after all. Of course, most studies show that if you really want to increase happiness, work is the last area of life that you should give anymore time to, let alone an extra miracle hour.
I might consider giving more time to maintaining my personal relationships. I call my friends more. I could never see my family enough. My wife certainly deserves a little more of my day, too. An extra day with any of them would definitely be well spent. The thing is, if I’m being honest, I could do that now if I could manage to both stay off of social media and get out of the expectation that I should always be working.
An extra hour can already be found, but what about an extra hour that was given? What if my day was suddenly 25 hours long instead of 24? What would I do with that time?
It’s hard to explain what I would do because I don’t want an extra hour to do something. I want an extra hour to do nothing. I want one hour every day to do a certain kind of nothing. You know the kind I mean. You remember it—the kind of nothing we all used to do when we were kids.
Do you remember the days that you spent playing with friends, or even by yourself? You were so busy running, jumping, climbing, exploring, and making up worlds and rules, and you would come home and your parents might ask, “What did you do today?” Almost every time, kids will shrug and give the same reply, “Nothing.” Of course, it was something. The time passed, and you played, but it happened so naturally that you hardly paid attention to it. I want to do that kind of nothing again.
Think of it: When was the last time you climbed a tree? When was the last time you made something using your hands? When was the last time you played a game that you made up the rules for? When was the last time you went on a hero’s journey before the streetlights came on? When was the last time you lost time? Could you imagine doing it again? What would that look like for you now?
Just like when we were kids, I wouldn’t spend it doing the same thing every day. The only common thread is that for that one extra hour each day, I would completely disconnect. No phone, no laptop, no TV. I could walk somewhere, I could write a poem or make a new collage, or I could just lay somewhere in the sun. It wouldn’t matter whether I was busy or if I stared at a wall. The point is that for a full 60 minutes a day, I would hear only my own thoughts and direct my own actions.
Sadly, that kind of nothing doesn’t come easily or naturally anymore. I don’t know whether it’s something that is discouraged in us or something we lose by simply aging, but playing, imagining, and making things feel hard to do now. My world has closed, and my thinking has become rigid. I feel silly or stupid trying to play now. I feel like I’m wasting something or losing something when I give myself over to that kind of nothing.
I suppose when you are an adult, play takes practice; it takes discipline. Play feels like work when you’ve grown out of it for so long. You have to fight the instinct to take yourself too seriously or to judge yourself too harshly.
You have to remember that the nothing you do isn’t for anything or anyone. It’s not to learn something, although you might. It’s not to make money, though some people do. The purpose of doing nothing is to just be. It’s like following yourself on a journey. You don’t know where you will end up, but you follow yourself in the sun, up a tree, through make-believe worlds, and back to yourself. I think a journey like that would be a miracle hour well spent.