When Trivia Rules our Free Time
Maybe it’s due to the fact that I’ve raised three teenagers or that I work with college students each week, but I’ve been noticing how people spend their free time. I’ve been noticing that some folks don’t seem to have free time at all, no margins within which to be in unhurried relationship with others and even less time to reflect on life without noise competing for those thoughts.
Do we spend our free time well? Do I? How much free time should we have? My latest project has me reading from the church fathers and mothers and their formative quests for a greater intimacy with Christ. Their disciplined pursuits are a challenge to our pleasure-seeking culture and its consumeristic underpinnings that press in on our time, attention, giving, and desires.
A computer program comes with “default” settings – fonts, sounds, graphic quality, etc. We’ve been shaped in ways over time that have produced our own default settings, choices we make in how we speak, think, relate, and in what makes us feel better. Our culture has changed these settings over time. Smoking isn’t the acceptable public activity it was 40 years ago, when you could even smoke on a airplane! It used to be that using a cell phone in the presence of others was rude, now we place our cell phones out on the table while in meetings. For recreation now, instead of being outside or reading a book, most of us say “let’s watch a movie” and see what’s on NetFlix that we haven’t seen more than three times before.
Some say we have to “make the most” of our days and often shame people into feeling like they’re not doing enough. And you can insert your particular issue here. We all have those people in our lives that, no matter what we do and accomplish, they point out what we could do even more. In reality, we are like that too, though our issues are different.
Trivia seems to rule the day, an easier default setting than a life live with disciplined learning. I see this every year when students come to college with the goal of being educated and learning. As students discover they have to be disciplined to read, write, and communicate at a deeper and more sustained level, you can see them struggle with this new level of commitment. The struggle is person, often emotional, and behavioral more than it is a struggle to do the work.
The root of amusement is “a-muse” or to be without thought. Just look at someone watching a video screen game or movie and you can often see this on their face.
I wonder how we in Christian ministry do at helping our people think and learn deeper than their default approaches. We seem to make long stories short, we circumvent theological difficulties, we teach the same 20 topics (roughly) each year, and most of us leaders don’t (by default) read deeply. Yet, disciplined reading is crucial to our success and well-being.
What if we worked against default? If we read in a disciplined way, even against the grain sometimes, and quit surrounding ourselves with ourselves … what would that do? What would we then be able to offer the world? What would happen?
Not default.
Something better.
Something new.
Not default.
The post When Trivia Rules our Free Time appeared first on In this Corner of the World - TerryLinhart.com.
