It occurred to me today that there are plenty of people on earth who will help me spend my time. Just checking my email has revealed how these people can be found in every corner of the globe.
One email told me to spend some of my time being a ghost. ‘50% off ghostwear tonight only. Don’t miss out!’
Another told me someone I know has said something on Facebook. ‘See Si’s message and other notifications that you’ve missed.’ I got caught out with this sort of thing many times in the past. I would go in and look to see what they said. I would find what they had said was all of ‘yummy!’ in response to a photo of some nondescript food that I couldn’t figure out the purpose of. I had spent a minute of my life that I would never get back just to read the word ‘yummy’ and another minute figuring out what they were saying that for.
Another email told me that I shouldn’t miss out on free sausage rolls. It turned out that what they really wanted me to do was click on a link. Out of curiosity which I seem to have too much of for my own good, I hovered over the link. An antivirus busybody popped up and waved its hands about wildly saying something about it being a suspicious link. So, I gave up on the possibility of getting some sausage rolls that I wouldn’t eat. Another minute of my day spent and gone.
Even a package of Thai green curry from Marks & Spencer bosses me about. It tells me that after cooking it in the microwave for 4 minutes, I should stand for 1 minute. Many a time, I would stand in front of the microwave watching the seconds tick by, making sure I am spending the next minute of my life standing. I’m so obedient that I even listen to the packaging from a ready meal.
However, with so many people and things telling me how to spend my time, I have no choice but to drop some of my obedient façade and learn to reject some of them. I remember how it started years ago with a Burmese friend. She had a home in the UK as well as in Myanmar, so she spent a lot of her time airborne between her two homes. On one or two of her trips, she offered to carry some gifts from me for my parents back in Yangon.
As I handed over my very small parcel thanking her for her kindness, she showed even more generosity and offered to spend some of my time for me for the next 5 weeks that she was going to be in Yangon. Somehow, she seemed to get it in her head that I had a lot of surplus time that I was looking to offload. Being 30 or so years older than me and wiser, she took it upon herself to help me spend my superfluous time.
She would allow me to spend 3 hours of my time every week to go and water her plants in her flat and check her mail. But it turned out that I wasn’t ready to discard that many hours of my life at that moment, so I agreed to 3 hours every two weeks instead. Just as I was thinking her kindness was a bit misguided as actually I wasn’t looking to get rid of any of my time, she showed me even more generosity by asking me if I could spend an extra two hours in the last week before she came back cleaning her flat ready for her return.
I thought about that request for a few minutes. I then realized that I would never ever change her impression of me being incredibly time rich. So it was with regret that I had to refuse her offer of using my time productively and inevitably with it our friendship as well.
Some things are meant to be refused after all.