When I was a school boy and when the examinations were close at hand I used to develop a keen eye for the beauties of nature. All on a sudden, with the history book opened at the causes of the First World War, I found that the eagle roving about the sky was of exceeding beauty. On the eve of Maths the quacking of ducks in the pool of mud in the backyard fell on my ears like a Bachian concerto. Everything about the world around bathed in a mystic charm except the lesson in hand. It was during such pressing times that I realized the glory of leisure. Invariably, I used to resolve that when the long holidays came I would become a worshipper of nature, like Wordsworth. I would enjoy “the unbearable lightness of being.”
But these were only the wishful thoughts of a strained mind. Once the exams were over and I became restive and began to seek means to escape from leisure into activity. By then, time would have become a byword for ennui, boredom.
It is a moot point whether having unlimited free time facilitates enjoyment of life. Does it enable a creative mind to flower, to give form to its inchoate aesthetic longings? Does limitless leisure make you read limitless number of books, travel as much as you want? Or does it enable you to do whatever Himalayan task you have voluntarily undertaken to do? Is the students’ performance at exams directly proportional to the amount of time they have for finishing their studies? Or is it otherwise – that humans perform better or more copiously when they are pressurized by time-limit?
It seems the latter is true. In his essay titled “Oxford in the Vacation,” Charles Lamb says something related to this issue that may provide some insight here. The great essayist of the Romantic age was known to be a clerk with the East India Company’s office in London. In the essay, after narrating the drudgery of clerical life, he confesses how he looked forward to the evenings when “The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation.” In his own endearing style what “gentle Elia” is telling us is about the beneficial side of the day’s awful routine – that it makes writing, the leisurely creativity of his evenings, more palatable and enjoyable. We may as well think that Lamb might not have written his beautiful personal essays had his life not been constrained by the pressures of time. I am also reminded of a comic scene in a Malayalam film of the 80s in which a loafer tells his friend that his ambition is to take casual leave and enjoy rest after getting a government job.
It seems that limitless time breeds indifference to it. One only has to look at the difference between the activities of the young and the senior people. Sleep and leisureliness are the attributes of youth. They sleep and laze away any amount of time with no compunction of wasting it because they don’t see any end to the time they have in their possession. They spend time like a rich prodigal. But those who are past their prime begin to see the end of the tunnel of life. They realize that the time of life is not going to last forever and rush to make use of every second of it. For them tempus fugit, because every action they plan comes with a time tag.