Opinions Have an opinion? Contact us at opinions @theotherpress.ca @ Time well wasted A personal account of doing nothing By Joel MacKenzie, Staff Writer read a story once in which everyone lived forever. Two categories of people emerged from this phenomenon: overachievers, who felt they needed to use this gift to achieve and experience everything the world had to offer, and procrastinators, who felt that, with infinite time, everything could be put off until later. Each category had its upsides and downsides. The overachievers got lots and lots done, but never rested; the procrastinators were very relaxed, but never did anything. Even without infinite life, I fall into the overachiever category. I like the idea of fitting the most into every moment, waiting until the last second before leaving to catch a bus, or avoiding sitting for long in front of aTV when I could be studying English, exercising, playing an instrument, or learning Russian. If I feel that I’m not doing enough, a nagging worry occupies the back of my mind, telling me that I’m missing something. Sometimes it feels the only way to truly experience anything is to always be doing something. The other day, I was forced to do nothing. The morning before, I felt a sore throat developing, so I decided to take raw garlic to remedy it. Long story short, I swallowed half a clove with no water, it got stuck in my throat, the nurses’ hotline told me that I had to go to the hospital, I drank cola until two a.m. to dissolve it, and I worked in the morning. The whole next day was a blur of feeling sick, sleeping, telling Photo courtesy of Bella.Images (Flickr) myself that I needed to do a lot of homework, and falling asleep while trying to do homework. It wasn’t filled with much. It took a lot of guilt repression to get over the fact that I needed to rest that day, not do the 1,000 activities I had planned. Only with rest did I later feel better. When the idea of doing nothing makes us Working hard, or hardly working? Those who can, do; those who can't pretend By Natalie Serafini, Opinions Editor f you work out, whether at a gym or in a class, you may have noticed that there are always certain people who don’t actually do anything. They come, they half-ass their way through the class, maybe they don’t do the moves correctly, and they take an astonishing number of breaks. I don’t care if someone can’t do the class perfectly— everyone's fitness levels are different, and I know there are times when I get outrun by a sexagenarian. What’s beyond frustrating though, is when these slackers act like the class was a breeze. 16 I do Pilates twice a week, and the two classes I take are taught by different instructors. They both have very different styles, but the classes are equally difficult. In these two classes is an older woman, the object of my frustrations. I always notice that she’s one of those people who doesn’t fully do the workouts, taking a lot of breaks and stretching while everyone else is hoofing away. That’s her prerogative, and I pretty much leave her to her stretching. Things get annoying when on Wednesdays, while everyone is groaning through another class, she says “It’s because we're used to Sunday Pilates, that’s why this one is so hard.” This is a woman who essentially naps her way through both classes, then goes on to say that one of the classes is easier than the other. First off, she’s out of shape. That’s perfectly fine, but if you don’t do anything during either class, then trying to pass one of them off as easy is ludicrous. When I’m sweating through another workout, I don’t want to hear that the class is easy— especially from someone who lays prone on the floor. Not to mention that, if the Pilates classes are on Wednesdays and Sundays, meaning they’re both once a week, how do you just get accustomed to one of them? Seems to me that would happen if you only went to one of the classes—then you would be unaccustomed to the other. She goes to both; she child’s poses her way through both; she should be unaccustomed to both. This woman doesn’t stop at suggesting that Sunday classes are easier than Wednesday classes, either. She also says the classes must be a breeze for those who are under 20. Well, I’m under 20, and I can tell you based on empirical evidence: neither class is a breeze. She seems to think that I must be winging through the classes, and although | recognize that someone of her advanced years must find it more difficult, I’m not sure that age is as much of a factor as she thinks. If you come consistently to classes and actually do the work, you should develop muscle. It may be more difficult if you’re older, but it’s not impossible. She doesn’t do the class, so it’s understandable if she doesn’t think it’s getting any less painful. feel guilty, we’ve become too caught up with pettiness. When we're doing something that we ve labelled important or necessary, the earth still turns just the same as when we're doing something labelled anything else. Life is never interrupted by achieving, and achieving can’t be allowed to interrupt life. “Wasted” time is necessary. Every moment can’t be scheduled. Pencilling in “relax” or “do nothing” on a calendar, for instance, isn’t relaxing or doing nothing: it’s treating these as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves; it’s treating them as things confined within their appointed time slots. If you’re an overachiever, and if you don’t have one already, find a blank spot in your weekly schedule to stop trying to control it, and let your schedule find itself. No matter what it gets filled with, it’s not a waste of time. It’s easy to say something’s easy when you don’t actually do it. It’s unjustified, but it’s not a strain. I can say that it was easy to paint the Mona Lisa: I don’t paint, and the few times that I have I definitely did not produce a masterpiece, but it’s not difficult to tout its simplicity. When you say that something is easy without acknowledging the hard work that other people do, you undermine their efforts. Although | know these classes are difficult and that this woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about, I can’t exactly grimace or groan in protest when the senior citizen next to me is saying it’s “easy.” If you do the work and breeze right through, fine. If you don’t walk the walk, then don’t talk.