My Quickening Life

Certain vague ideas led to the formation of this blog. Now that they are starting to become more concrete in my mind I would like to give some insight into my personal motivations.

Growing up I always felt to a certain extent that I was lazy in the eyes of the world. This never bothered me, as I considered "working" in the eyes of the world as doing something you didn't really want to do, that served no perceivable purpose. Not that I was against things that served no purpose! I was all in favor of them, provided they were things I wanted to do. What motivated my early guitar playing was simply the fact that I enjoyed being able to do things that I was previously unable to do, and the joy of the physical creation of music. Likewise I read a lot because I just liked learning new things and thinking. Finally, I spent a lot of time with friends, often outside, doing something active, because this was the just the best thing you could possibly do. I don't feel like I was a special kid or anything, in terms of my innate nature, but I was incredibly lucky. I had parents who never pushed me to "work", and I had great friends. I also had time, almost unlimited time after the drudgery of school. Furthermore, I realized at a young age that my wonderful life depended on this time, and I organized my life so as to maximize free time and minimize responsibility. Hence the "lazy" thing.

As I grew up this awareness of the value of free time has shaped many of my choices. I went to music school partly to escape the ineffectiveness of mass education. I thought public school was a waste of time, and college would be much the same. I could learn much faster on my own whatever intellectual things I wanted to learn. Music was a craft, though, and you needed a teacher, and I didn't consider it "work" to practice guitar all day, so music school was acceptable. Unfortunately, though, when my music started to serve a purpose other than my own enjoyment, it quickly became work. Practicing to win a competition, pass a jury, get into grad school, or to have a professional career, was just not the same. It was "work", and incredibly time consuming work. It crowded out my time for reading, and my own creative projects. Luckily when I got to musical school I decided that if I ever had to choice between practicing and friends, I would choose friends, because that is the best thing in life. I made great friends and love was not all toil.

When I graduated college and moved back home I lost that as well. I got a job that took a lot of my time, and my friends either lived far away, or were working and busy to. I was still trying to practice at the level I did in college, and I just didn't have time for friends if I wanted to keep up both my official job, and my practicing. Life was really drudgery. What good is life without self expression(what my guitar playing had once been), a rich inner life(what my self-education had once helped develop) and most importantly deep human connections(what my friends had once provided)? For me these are the best things in life, and all they require is time. Not the free time that we think about when we think of weekends and days off work, but real leisure time. Time to read a book the way I described in the last post. Time to write a piece of music. Time to talk to a friend for hours and hours about nothing in particular.

At the time, I understood that a certain amount of work needs to get done on the earth if people are to live, and I could accept contributing to the market society in order to earn my lively hood. What I didn't understand was why so many people work so much. When I thought about the advances in technology and agricultere that our society has undergone, it seemed to me that people should have to do much less "work" than they currently do. This led to an study of economics and economic history. I feel like I have understood my problem, the problem of society, and that I am near a solution. I will elaborate more in future posts.