Fear Of Free Time

By Martha Beck
Martha Beck
We want it, crave it, dream about it. But when life hands us a few empty hours, we squirm, wriggle, dodge, and feel unaccountably lazy. Martha Beck shows us how to find something in nothing and love it.

My observation of people in general is that we desperately want to take a break from our hectic, overscheduled lives—but not right now. Empty time is a powerful medicine that can make us more joyful and resilient, but it's strangely hard to swallow. In our culture, the very word empty has negative connotations: loss, need, desolation, hopelessness. Our ambivalence toward doing nothing creates what psychologists call an approach-avoidance response: We yearn for a powerful source of liberation that is right under our noses, and we'll do almost anything to avoid it.

Doing Everything, Accomplishing Nothing
The result of this unconscious psychological arm wrestling is that we fritter away our lives. We don't do the things that would bring our dreams to fruition, but we don't embrace emptiness, either. Instead, we play a hundred games of computer solitaire or stay on the phone with anyone just to fill the time.

Why We Don't Empty Our Time
Generally speaking, a packed schedule is seen as the sign of a happenin' life; empty time is for losers. Part of the reason is our culture: According to the Western perspective, filling every moment with "value added" activities is a sign of virtue and significance. There's an even deeper reason we may avoid empty time: For us, it isn't really empty. It's full of demons—grief, rage, anxiety, guilt, regret. Personal experience tells me that never emptying our time is like never emptying our garbage cans, our bladders, or our digestive tracts. Do those images disgust you? Good. I want them to. The archetype of the virtuously overbusy person is so ingrained in our societal mind-set that it takes strong language to knock it loose.