There is a small piece of paper stuck to Colin’s laptop.

It says: “The things that you schedule are the things that get done.”

Responsible. Organised. Grown-up. 

Colin is nowhere near the laptop.

He is lying on the lawn with a puppy.

I have been watching him for some time. Rip, the retriever puppy — not Colin, though the distinction occasionally becomes unclear — moves through three very definite states:

Relaxed.

Intense.

Passed Out.

No gentle transition. One moment, peacefully contemplating the mysteries of existence. The next, launching himself at a leaf with the full conviction of a creature defending the planet from certain destruction. Then, without warning, completely asleep. Without apology. 

Nothing is being accomplished out there. No box is being ticked.

No progress is being made on this month’s YQ Reflection — which, just quietly, is cutting things rather fine. Tomorrow is the last day of the month.

The note on the laptop is beginning to look anxious.

But Colin is laughing. Not the polite laugh used in meetings. A proper, unguarded laugh — the kind that takes over before an adult has time to decide whether the moment warrants it.

And I cannot help wondering when we became so suspicious of moments like these.

When did doing nothing become something we need to justify?

We call it wasting time — as though time were a valuable substance we’d carelessly tipped onto the floor.

Even rest is expected to have a purpose. We rest so that we can recover. We go for a walk so that we can clear our heads. There is always an invisible “so that” attached. We have become terribly uncomfortable doing something simply because, for that moment, it is lovely.

Children don’t have this problem. A child can spend twenty minutes following an ant without once asking what value the experience is adding to their day. They pick up broken seashells and carry them home as treasure. They inhabit moments that serve no purpose whatsoever — and are, for exactly that reason, free. 

Perhaps childhood felt slower because we actually lived inside it.

As adults, we live so much of our lives in places where we are not. We look forward towards our plans, ambitions and imagined futures. We look backwards towards the things we miss, the choices we regret and the versions of our lives we think we should have lived.

Then we are surprised by how quickly the years pass.

Of course they pass quickly.

We are hardly ever there when they happen.

What we’re missing, I think, is what I’d call un-adult-erated joy. Joy before an adult gets hold of it and asks what it’s for. Joy without an agenda.

The note on the laptop is not wrong. There are responsibilities to carry and things that really do need to be scheduled. I am not saying otherwise — Colin would become completely unplayable.

But the schedule should also make room for things that will never appear important enough to earn a place on it.

Rip won’t always be this small. He won’t always attack Colin’s toes with such conviction. One day the garden will be quieter, and Colin will sit at his desk and remember, with surprising tenderness, how impossible it once was to get anything done.

So I am not going to call him inside.

Not all time needs to be used. Some of it should simply be lived.

And if Colin needs someone to blame for that — well.

That is what I am here for.

— Ed