Time out

No matter how rushed the day, remember to take out some time for yourself

“What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare”, wrote the poet William Henry Davies in his Songs of Joy and Others, published in 1911. But the sentiment still holds true more than a century later. It really is a ‘poor life’, as Davies wrote, if we have ‘no time to stand and stare’.

But in our modern anxiety about making the most of our time, of making each moment count, we seem to have lost the ability to do that. We race through the day, trying to cram in as much as we can into it: family, work, kids, workout and what-not. We spend the evenings networking so that we stay ahead of the competition. We catch up on news and gossip late into the night. And then we get up the next day and go through the whole sorry cycle again.

Where is the time to ‘stand and stare’ in that kind of tight schedule let alone ‘turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, see how they dance’. We are all too busy dancing around trying to get our work assignments finished, the chores completed, the kids’ homework done, and making sure that dinner’s on the table. God, if we stopped spinning all those plates madly, our entire world would come crashing down our ears!

But wait, pause for just a minute and think: would it really? Or are you just creating needless pressure for yourself by trying to be all things to all people all the time? Would it really hurt to take some time out for yourself? Or are you doing more damage than you realize by ignoring your own needs?

If you feel tired and rundown all the time, you will not be doing be an optimal job on any of the many tasks you have assigned yourself. If you feel put-upon by the demands that the people in your life place upon you, then it won’t be long before you start resenting them. Result: nobody will be happy; neither you nor those around you.

So, in everyone’s interests, just take a time-out. And while you’re at it, take some time out for yourself. Set aside a portion of day – it could be even a measly half hour – when you do something just for yourself. Something that gives you pleasure, something that makes you happy, something that makes you forget all about the demands that life places on you. 

It’s tough, I know, to make this kind of change when you have conditioned yourself to believe that the earth would stop turning on its axis if you stepped away from the plate. And after years of considering everybody but yourself, you probably are at a loss as to what you can do with your me-time.

So, just to get you started, here are just a few suggestions. Maybe they will set you free to think up some of your own.

• Take an evening off to go off and chill with your friends (no spouses allowed). Bitch about your co-workers, bosses, husbands/wives, kids, in-laws, whatever you need to get off your chest. Have a drink or two. Ditch the diet and go for the deep-fried stuff. Act as if you’re back in college, out for a good time with your mates. You’ll feel like that by the end of the evening, anyway.
• Have a date night with your spouse, where neither of you is allowed to discuss a) the kids b) the mortgage c) your jobs d) old resentments. Use this time to reconnect with one another, to remember why you fell in love with each other in the first place.
• If you are lucky enough to get driven around, don’t use the commute to catch up on emails or make work calls. Use that time to listen to some of your favourite tracks on your ipod or read a book. Or simply stare out of the window, take in the world, and revel in the rare felicity of being alone with your thoughts.
• A friend of mine swears by this: get up 20 minutes before everyone else in the house, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea, read the papers or just stare out of the balcony as a new day dawns. This will give you the equilibrium you need to take the rest of the day in your stride.
• Do one thing everyday that gives you pleasure. It could be anything: getting a manicure; reading to your children; walking in the rain; eating a cupcake; phoning an old friend; soaking in the bath last thing before going to bed; watching an old episode of Frasier; sneaking in a late-night snack once the kids are safely tucked away in bed.

In other words, take time out for yourself. Or, to quote one of the best poets of our age, the songwriter Paul Simon,  “Slow down, you’re moving too fast, You’ve got to make the morning last. Just kicking down the cobble stones, Looking for fun and feeling groovy.” 

Say this much for poets; whether it is Davies or Simon, they get it right every time.

Slow down...you're moving too fast

Sometimes the best way of doing something is to do nothing at all!

Admitting to a love of anything Italian these days tends to lead to accusations of being 'Congi' 'sickular' 'paid media' but I am going to stick my neck out anyway and fess up to just that. I love Italy. The small villages, dotted like shining gems all around the gleaming countryside. The tiny towns, with their amazing piazzas and dazzling duomos. The big cities, heaving with life, and drowning you in unexpected beauty around every corner. The seaside with its deep azure waters, the mountains with their verdant landscape, every corner of the country has something stunning to offer.

And then, of course, there are the Italians themselves. Okay, I am prepared to concede that they may not be the most organised or even the most industrious people on the planet. But what they lack in terms of a work ethic they more than make up with their sense of style, their natural elegance, and their love of 'bellazza' (beauty) be it in their clothing, their houses, or even their food and drink.

There is something magical about sitting at a roadside cafe in Italy and watching the world go by. Both the men and the women - no matter what their age, shape, size or social status -- have a certain individual flair to their dressing, a je ne sais quoi (sorry, can't think of a suitable Italian equivalent) that makes them look both stylish and elegant. (If you do find the odd graceless creature trotting by, you can rest assured that he or she is -- like me! -- a tourist.) I could spend entire days just feasting my eyes on the pictures of everyday life they conjure up as they rush to work, take their dog for a walk, play with their kids in the park, or simply enjoy an al fresco meal with their friends.

And what is even more magical is that the Italians have a special phrase to describe all this sitting around and watching the world go by. They call it dolce far niente. Or, loosely translated into the far more mundane English, the sweetness of doing nothing.

Over the years that I have spent studying Italian and travelling through Italy, this has become my favourite phrase. It perfectly sums up my state of mind when I am on holiday. I want to experience the sweetness of doing nothing. Of just wandering around and soaking in the atmosphere. No taking pictures. No obsessive checking of phone messages or emails. No dipping into social media to check what's happening in the world (or to tell the world what is happening with me). No peeking into guide books to check what are the must-dos and must-sees for every city.

No, I simply revel in the sweetness of doing nothing. Dolce far niente. What an absolutely marvellous way of flushing your mind of all the toxins that the stresses of day-to-day life produce and recharging your batteries for the time when you must inevitably return to the day job.

Last week, as I sat around in an Italian coastal town thinking about ideas for this column after days of doing absolutely nothing at all, I couldn't help but wonder why we have lost the ability of switching off and losing ourselves in the moment. One reason of course is the hyper-connectedness of the world we live in. The office is always an email away; social media means you can never really get away from it all. And thanks to the way our brains have been rewired by the Internet, our attention spans have been shot to hell. So, not only can we not concentrate on anything for too long, we cannot focus on nothing for any length of time at all!

But that's only part of the story, I suspect. There's also the fear of missing out that impels us to never stand still, to keep moving, to look out for more, to snatch the most out of any experience. We want it all, we want it now, and we fear that we will miss out if we don't keep striving for more every moment of our lives.

So deep is our fear of missing out that we have even infected our children with it. No longer are they allowed to just relax and enjoy themselves during their vacations (or even during term time for that matter). Instead we schedule swimming lessons, tennis camp, science tuition, guitar classes, and God alone knows what else, to make sure that they never experience a single moment of delicious idleness (the kind we revelled in when we were kids).

But you know what? It's okay to stand still some time. It's okay to slow down and watch the world go by. It's okay to lose yourself in the moment. And it's okay to indulge in a bit of dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing: you really should try it some time.