2025-01-07
tags: none
Words: 1380 (5 minutes to read)
(This is entry 65 of #100DaysToOffload)
(Warning: this one is rambly and honestly should have been a wv)
Tonight, I have wasted a full hour. I spent it just thinking and relaxing, basically wasting the evening in bed.
I don't know whether that's bad or not. Is time spent non-productively a waste?
The same applies to other things. For instance, on Monday, I basically did nothing but work, and then see a friend in the evening. When I got to the end of it, I felt as if the day was wasted. Yet, surely it couldn't be right? I got my work done, and I saw a friend. Both of those things are valuable in themselves (well, the latter at least).
The problem was that yesterday counted for only one point in the way I essentially score the day. As a result, I deemed it a day not well spent, when in reality I did achieve in another sense.
Likewise, if I spend an hour relaxing, I have to have on my conscience the fact that I could be spending the time lifting weights, or playing guitar, or reading, or... anything that I've deemed as a filler of recreational time.
Even valid things to fill up my time with, like seeing friends, going on a night out, or even working late into the evening (all three of which are necessary for a healthy life - the lattermost maybe not, actually) are not counted by the system, and thus graded equivalently to doing nothing at all.
And in fact, so are many of the basic chores of life: tidying up, washing up, etc. My laundry is a task that I tick off (so makes me feel productive!) but apart from that, it's treated as assumed labour.
Then, there is the question of whether doing nothing is even so bad at all. Is it a sin to just sit and do nothing?
If reworded, sitting and doing nothing, or just sitting, becomes zazen, or zen, or meditation.
I suppose it would be healthy to say that, just as the odd sweet is acceptable as long as it is within your macro needs for the day, likewise idling in this way, or doing nothing, is completely fine as long as it does not inhibit the general progress towards goals. The problem is, all non-action is inherently action that inhibits my progress towards non-specific goals like become better at guitar. That goal has no clearly defined end (nor can it), so any time I don't spend on it, say if I'm tired, becomes wasted time. This is probably true.
Likewise, for things like study, or reading, I could always get them done quicker, or read three books in the month not two, etc. This at its extreme becomes hustle-culturish. Any time I am not progressing I am wasting.
I don't think that's a good solution to it either; it doesn't allow the kind of downtime that makes life pleasant. The argument I suppose is that downtime is something you have to earn: until I'm jacked, I must try consistently at the gym.
... Not sure. I suppose the problem is not even that - moreso, it is that I am beating myself up over it. Essentially, I choose my actions (all of them), so I either choose ones I want or choose ones I don't. If I choose a course of action (like relaxing for an hour, instead of doing guitar, exercise, etc.) then that is because one part of me (call it the actor) that determines what I do desires a given course of action, and another (call it the evaluator) desires another. This internal conflict results in a negative feeling (from the evaluator, which presumably is the sit of reason) due to the conflict of desires, or really because the evaluator doesn't get what is desired.
Maybe happiness is somewhat about aligning the actor and the evaluator. For instance, take a typical vice like smoking. It isn't actually a problem in the early days when there is a haze (smoke) over the mind, that considers it an acceptable action. The same applies really to all vices. At a given point, the actor begins to either take such extremes as the evaluator deems excessive, or the evaluator, in response to new knowledge or maturation of certain ideas, begins to dislike the actions taken by the actor. Ok, so these are separated (pseudopsychology - a field in and of itself pseudoscientific) (also, I imagine this is already an idea in psychology and it's just called with different terms), what use does it have as a concept?
Well, I suppose, for happiness, the goal is the align the actor and the evaluator. This I suppose either could happen through the evaluator conceding ground to the actor, or vice versa, or some compromise being reached. Within this Ive-just-made-it-up-and-its-a-load-of-bollocks framework, I don't really know which of the actor and the evaluator would be the one to reason about what decision to take (presumably the evaluator). If this were the case, would it not always come to a decision that benefits itself? For instance, taking the example of a vice, it would always decide against performing the vice. Yet, this naturally doesn't happen always, so there must be some force the actor exerts that allows the vice to cling on. Perhaps, the evaluator has simply not evaluated any vice that persists yet to that degree, and so the act persists.
Yet, it is the case often that it takes a long time of saying I'm going to quit, I want to quit, and a long time of relapsing etc., for many vices, before eventually something clicks that allows the quitting to become perpetual, or until some stressor.
Not a clue. I feel as though there is something in this, though. In a vice, typically, the body acts against the recommendations of the mind. Likewise, in the case of a discrepancy, there is a desire to do X, yet the body does not comply. These are the two halves (action and inaction) of the same separation. In both situations, the evaluator (and I) feel distress, because the actor does not comply with desires. Perhaps in the case of the evaluator, it only sort of wishes for a thing to happen, but doesn't necessarily "tell" the actor, sort of like an immature man does with a cute girl at his office. The overcoming sensation (we've all felt it: forcing oneself to do something, despite a resistance from the body) is the telling of the actor by the evaluator. A theorem of self-love: for self-improvement, there must be a degree of honesty, as between lovers, of the desires of the one regarding the other. (I could even, maybe, draw parallels between the actor as the effective, though oft misguided, male aspect, and the more passive, pensive evaluator as the female..., though I'm not sure how well they would hold up. Perhaps call it yin and yang instead, though nor do I know whether that is a particularly good parallel either.)
Sounds fancy, not sure it actually means anything. In essence, though, it brings perhaps a sort of symmetry to the affairs of love and to self-improvement, which is more or less a form of self-love: in desiring what is best for one, a given course of action is pursued.
Because it's a bit hokey at the moment.
Essentially, I cannot think it would mean anything else than, like how a lover must confess their feelings to achieve what they want, I must force myself to partake in a course of action. There is however to consider whether what the evaluator espouses is necessarily always correct, or rather, to borrow from The Beatles, Did she understand it when they said that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure; will she still believe it when he's dead?
When viewing a parallel like this (between sex and the machinations of the mind) it inclines me to wonder to what extent any or all things can be viewed through this lens. Well, it's in essence a binary, so anything that is divisible (probably everything, even quarks and leptons) could be divided in this way.
And I still haven't answered the question. Is the actor or the evaluator in the right. I don't know, and I've squandered 1400 words on this already. Off to bed.