Spare Time

Let's consider the idea of spare time for a moment. It's one of those concepts that's so ingrained in our culture that we rarely stop and think about what it actually means.

Spare time: time which is leftover, extra, surplus, time which is unfilled with necessary things.

This is a notion that I'm struggling to make sense of, the idea that there are a number of things that we have to do and the rest of our time can be spent on leisure activities. Who came up with the distinction? Who decided what's a necessary activity and what's leisure?

There are 168 hours in a week, in this modern age many, if not most, people work full time, that's usually between 36 and 40 hours a week. Let's for argument's sake take an average of 38 hours, leaving 130 hours. We're encouraged to sleep for eight hours every night, (56 per week), which leaves 74 hours. How much of those 74 hours is filled with necessary jobs, and how much is leisure?

I would like to propose a suggestion: that dividing our time into' work' and 'leisure' is a human deceit, that we have somehow convinced ourselves that work is something we have to do in order to afford our leisure activities.

Now, I have four jobs, three children, a cat, a dog and a ridiculous amount of house work, we don't have much money so I tend to bake a lot of cakes and biscuits for packed lunches and snacks, we have a wood burning stove to heat our home, it's economical, but the wood needs collecting and chopping: spare time is a rare commodity for me.

Leisure is not rare however, because I enjoy most of what I do. For many years I had the mindset of the rest of the world: "what do I need to do today, what do I need to get over and done with, before I can enjoy myself". Now I see things differently: "What is there to enjoy, in what I'm doing now?"

That would be my fatherly advice to one and all: that there is no such thing as spare time, because it is our duty to make the most of what time we have, and to prevent our lives from becoming one long string of chores and misery, we should look for the positives in everything we do.