Wasting time

Phillip Adams would make a cranky mother. And a tetchy Buddhist.

Phillip Adams is unlikely to be either of these things, ever. Just as well, judging by his most recent column in the Weekend Australian.

Adams calculates that of the 727,080 hours some of us can expect to be alive, we can estimate the hours we have available for meaningful activity by deducting sleep, plus a few years at the beginning and end of life when our brains are starting up or grinding to a halt. We can also, he suggests, knock off time spent in futile and frustrating pursuits such as sitting in traffic jams, unstacking the dishwasher and dragging the dustbins.

Most parents of young children could add a few things to that list: dislodging peas from nostrils, disinfecting Lego pieces rescued from the toilet bowl, scraping apply puree off the carpet.

But there is a danger in so easily dismissing the work that is to be done around the house every day. There is a value and a virtue in that work, if you look hard enough. (Some days you do need to get the magnifying glass out.)

If we denigrate the mundane labour in our days – the cooking, washing, cleaning ­– we lose our attachment to our immediate world. Take gardening: it’s a beautiful way to reconnect with the soil and the growing of things. The same notion can be applied to the work we do in our homes.

Edward Espe Brown is a Zen priest from San Francisco, but he is best known for his cooking. He is the author of several cookbooks, including Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. Brown finds that there is something simple and direct about cooking that fulfills him in a way that more intellectual pursuits cannot. His attachment to doing fundamental things with his hands is startling and refreshing in these days of CDD (compulsive domestic delegation).

Edward Espe Brown believes that many people struggle to find any satisfaction in the more mundane tasks in life because in our modern Western world, manual labour isn’t honoured any more. ‘Not only when it comes to cooking, also the carpenter, the mechanic, the plumber, the farmer, the gardener and the seamstresses are affected by this. Their knowledge and craft are devalued. We don’t have time for all those things any more.’

Like anything else in our lives – eating, drinking, playing – the work we do in our homes can be a gift to our souls if done mindfully.

Phillip Adams takes the view that we must not waste time, and we must use the few quality hours left over from ‘the drudgery of existence’ in meaningful pursuits such as reading, or looking at the stars, or simply thinking.

He is absolutely right that we shouldn’t shy away from silence and contemplation: they are the fibre and sinew that binds and strengthens our existence. But in discounting the hours spent in less glamorous pursuits, he is also denying the possibility of value in those tasks.

Hand the man a dishbrush and a cobweb broom, I’ve got a job for him.