2008 03 Killing Time

Killing Time

Virtually everyone does what we call killing time. People who kill time may also live lives of great purpose. But we all need “down time” to gain strength for whatever is next. In order to successfully kill time, you have to be reasonably secure in the expectation that your next meal will somehow materialize and that you’ll be comfortable enough to enjoy wasting something precious. So at some time before the killing time moment, you either must have worked, been very lucky, or planned well.

The expression “killing time” denotes death since wasted time is never recovered. What is it about human beings that we are so willing to embrace death by frittering away something which by all measures is very limited for us and is thus precious? Think of the time wasted in seemingly meaningless activities of games, gambling, hiking, watching television, going to the movies, going to the mall, making music, reading comic books, sitting on the beach, staring at a computer, or doing nothing—if that is truly possible. We live in a society of such abundance, that we sometimes reject the notion of having to be productive every moment.

I remember a comedy routine where I heard Bill Cosby do in a live performance at a convention. He did an hour monologue which, in part, involved an imaginary conversation with his wife. In a moment of quiet, she starts, “Honey, what are you thinking?”. He answers, “Nothing”. With superb timing and a telling expression, he observes her look and says, “I knew I was in trouble”. So if killing time is universal, why is it that it has the guilt-laden stigma of being unproductive? I surmise that the answer lies in the fact that we really do have a limited time to do something with our lives. If we’re going to fulfill that God-given obligation, then wasting what He gave us is not what He had in mind. On the other hand, He did give us sleep. In fact, He gave us a lot of that. Roughly one third of our lives is spent in sleep, and whether we like it or not, it is vital to our well being.

According to the laws of physics, it appears that time can be “warped”, just as light is warped by a gravity lens. If that is true, then it might also be possible to travel backward in time. Many a science fiction novel has been written with that premise. If only we could go back to correct our mistakes, that would be something many of us would wish for. But time for us seems linear. We start our “clock” before birth, are born into the world, spend our indeterminate time here and die. Other than a leap of faith (being born again or having eternal life), it is not currently scientifically possible to achieve what the science fiction writer or the Bible proposes.
If you put the emphasis on the first word, “KILLING” time, the connotation is completely changed. KILLING time thereby means a time to kill. Growing up, we had good friends who enjoyed hunting. They’d plan their trips to shoot deer, elk or antelope. It was a way of life for them and they did it with great gusto. That was their killing time. I remember going to their workshop and being fascinated by the process of filling shells with gunpowder and packing them into a waterproof case. The danger of it all was clear to me. I was perhaps seven or eight years old at the time.

In college, I did go on a hunting trip with my roommate Hank, from Arizona and another fraternity brother. Hank planned the trip for a remote part of California. With his game license in hand, the three of us packed into a truck with his rifle in the rack by the rear window. In the afternoon, after target practice (hitting a can on a post), we started hiking through the brush. After about an hour, and in the blink of an eye, we spooked a three point buck which quickly darted off through the forest. My friend got off one shot, but missed in his haste to pull the trigger. That day, he never had another chance to make a kill. For us, it was just killing time…three buddies having a good time tramping through the forest together. I remember that even though he admonished us to be stealthy, we had a pretty good time telling stories. The experience did give me respect for how difficult it is to hunt game.

My wife and I enjoy certain games on our computers as well as board games together. That for us is our killing time. After a long day of productivity and work related challenges, it seems to help us unwind to just do nothing. One of our favorites is the Sudoku—arranging numbers in a sequence from one to nine. Another is Spider Solitaire, a computer aided card sorting game. Perhaps the attraction of these games is to make order out of chaos. That is the point of jigsaw puzzles as well. There is a certain satisfaction of feeling like you can organize randomness. It is almost as if we say to God, “I’m in control here”. Card games and dominoes are all about finding patterns. The point of Backgammon is to find combinations out of the random roll of the dice which block points and advance tokens. Chess is perhaps a higher form of killing time, since it pits the skill of opponents to out-strategize each other. All these kinds of activities do stimulate the mind, but allow the body to sit and be lazy. And laziness allows for obesity. So a nice balance is to find ways of killing time which are more active.

I learned an important lesson about time from K, our daughter-in-law. We were celebrating our grandson E’s first birthday with a special cake she had beautifully decorated. Now I’m one who likes a certain amount of order in life. That includes washing dishes and cleaning up when a mess is made. E was very tired at the end of the day yet we were determined to celebrate his birthday with this stunning cake. He was placed in his high chair with a piece of frosted cake. Almost immediately cake and frosting started to get all over the place. My inclination was to try to immediately clean it up. So I got up to get a towel. But K admonished me to sit down and relax. The next day she said to me, “Frank, I’m sorry I snapped at you, but I was enjoying the moment”. What a great lesson for me. Things don’t always have to be perfectly in order, and sometimes, just doing nothing is the most productive activity. Thanks for the life lesson, K. And yes, that is a birthday party I’ll remember for a long time. Indeed it was a special moment and I might have missed it.

Favorite ways I enjoy killing time include making music and hiking. Making music does take the mind off world problems. I like to describe it as using so many neurons, that there aren’t any left for much else. Hiking, on the other hand, energizes the legs and lungs. The added benefit is that a good long hike leads to good long sleep…another mostly mindless activity. So to create balance, killing time is part of a nicely balanced life. I think I’ll continue to kill time for a while each day. It will do the soul good as long as it is balanced with productive activity as well!

©Frank Bliss 2008 All rights reserved
March, 2008