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<\/p>\nMany people cherish a belief that there will be a time in their lives when they\u2019re finally able to sit back and relax. After working hard for years, we\u2019ll finally be happy with the level of success or wealth we\u2019ve achieved, and feel entitled to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labour.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But it often doesn\u2019t work like this. Most of us depend on activity in the same way that we depend on distractions like television. We use activity as a way of keeping our attention focused outside ourselves.<\/p>\n
Not long after leaving university, I took a temporary office job, in the pensions department of an engineering firm. I did a number of dreary jobs around that time, but this was undoubtedly the dreariest. There was a small room in the office full of shelves packed with dozens of boxes of old pension forms\u2014one for every person who had ever worked for the company. My task was to sort the forms into alphabetical order. There were thousands of them, and it took me two whole months.<\/p>\n
One of my colleagues was an old man called Jimmy. When I asked him how long he\u2019d worked here, he replied, \u2018Just a few months. I\u2019m from a temping agency like you. I\u2019m 66\u2014I retired from my proper job about a year ago. I was working in insurance.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018So why did you start this job, just after retiring?<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I didn\u2019t like having nothing to do<\/em>,\u2019 he said. \u2018I like keeping myself busy<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n I can understand why he did this now, but at the time I found it amazing. Why would somebody who\u2019d been set free from the routine drudgery of office work choose to go back to it, even though he didn\u2019t need the money? From my point of view, he could have been staying in bed late, reading books, going for walks in the countryside, taking up new hobbies\u2014but he\u2019d chosen to shut himself up in a stuffy office all day again.<\/p>\n In this sense the term \u2018human being\u2019 is really a misnomer. One of our essential characteristics of human beings is that we find it impossible to be. If anything, we are human doings. An indigenous anthropologist would probably nickname us \u2018The creatures who can\u2019t do nothing<\/em>\u2019 or perhaps \u2018The creatures who can\u2019t be alone with themselves<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean to disparage this impulse of ours to \u2018keep busy.\u2019 To a large extent we don\u2019t have any choice. We have to work hard to keep our attention focused outside ourselves, because when we don\u2019t, the consequences can be very negative. People who don\u2019t have much structure or activity in their lives are more vulnerable to psychological problems. This is probably one of the main reasons why pop musicians, film stars and other extremely rich people are so vulnerable to drug addiction, depression and other problems. In the UK, there is a high incidence of drug problems amongst the aristocracy, for instance. There have been many cases of \u2018privileged\u2019 young aristocrats being arrested for heroin or cocaine possession, checking themselves into clinics for treatment and\/or dying due to drug problems.<\/p>\n You might find this difficult to believe. How can these people be so unhappy when they have so much money and so much leisure time? After all, they\u2019re free of the niggling worries about paying bills and keeping up with the mortgage which oppress most of us. They can buy anything they want at any time, go anywhere in the world they want to, do anything they want to at any moment.<\/p>\n But the main factor here is too much empty time. To put it simply, people who don\u2019t need to work spend too much time alone with themselves, with nothing in particular to do. They aren\u2019t forced to fix their attention outside themselves for 8 or 9 hours per day, as most of us are.<\/p>\n Research also shows that unemployed people are much more unhappy than the employed, with a higher level of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and mental problems. This isn\u2019t just because of a lack of activity and structure, of course\u2014other factors include the lower income, low social status and fewer social contacts\u2014but it\u2019s certainly an important factor. Retired people often suffer similar problems too. After a short \u2018honeymoon\u2019 period when they feel glad to be free of the pressure and the deadlines of work, they often begin start to feel disillusioned and even depressed.<\/p>\n But why do we need to keep doing? Why does inactivity cause us such problems?<\/p>\n There seems to be fundamental psychological discord inside us. The problem is that our own \u2018inner-space\u2019\u2014the place we enter when our attention isn\u2019t focused externally\u2014is a very uncomfortable place. Our own \u2018psyche\u2019, the consciousness we feel ourselves to be inside our heads, is so restless and discordant that it\u2019s difficult for us to spend any time there.<\/p>\n Think of two parents who argue all the time. There\u2019s a terrible atmosphere in their house. Every time their teenage daughter comes home she senses an atmosphere of hostility which she knows can erupt into aggression at any moment. Every time she talks to her mother and father they\u2019re irritable and snap back at her. They\u2019re so wrapped up in their enmity for each other that they don\u2019t have any time for her. As a result she tries to spend as much time away from the house as she can, spending her time at her friends\u2019 houses and hanging around the park and the local shops. She only goes back when it\u2019s absolutely necessary, for meals or for sleeping.<\/p>\n The only way we can stop doing and truly become human beings is by healing this discord inside us. We can only learn to be by learning to rest comfortably within our consciousness\u2014which entails first making our consciousness a more harmonious place.<\/p>\n Author: Steve Taylor, Ph.D.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many people cherish a belief that there will be a time in their lives when they\u2019re finally able to sit back and relax. After working hard for years, we\u2019ll finally be happy with the level of success or wealth we\u2019ve achieved, and feel entitled to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labour. But it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1371],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104113,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104109\/revisions\/104113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDecember 12, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n