With age, I have learned to appreciate adages and proverbs that I found silly as a child. Once regarded as merely the impractical phrases my parents, teachers or other authority figures used to gently and verbally chastise me, these same proverbs and adages now follow and comfort me. And like an old friend with whom I have shared a common experience I know the message each brings has meaning in my life.
One Spanish proverb comes to mind when summing up my free time:
“The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand”
I have only one devil and my devil has a name…Time. And though I have made every effort to control him with the use of calendars, watches, alarms and automatic reminders, somehow, he always seems one tick ahead of me as I toil about my mundane activities looking for a respite from life. I don’t think Time ever threatened me while growing up…in fact, I think I had too much time and often complained of sheer boredom, from elementary school right up until I graduated from college. In those idle times, the “thousand little devils” would manifest themselves through insecurities or self-doubts pertaining to my place and purpose in this complex world.
These little devils paralyzed me and created cracks in the brightly multi-colored façade of the idealized life I had envisioned for myself. Years passed and the network of cracks destroyed the idealized enclosure I had used to protect and shelter my childhood. Then, after a low point I chose to rebuild the façade in a manner better suited to highlight my strengths and protect my weaknesses while still coveting those idealistic notions that brought me strength and comfort as a little one. In so doing, the thousand little devils transformed themselves into one nemesis, one devil…Time. I battle Time for my kids, for my girlfriend, for my online business, for my parents, for my siblings and for projects I began full of promise but never devoted enough effort to see through to completion.
And so the battle continues and every now and then, I take a cheap shot…I kick that devil between the legs, poke him in the eye or give him a wedgie in the form of a day off of work, a diversion in the park, a match of tennis, a game of freeze tag with my twins, or a walk through the Farmer’s market with my girlfriend. My vain attempt to get an upper hand, to lose myself for a moment, to catch my breath as if to say…”Dude, can you give me just a little bit of space now?”.
