When I am on task I get a lot done. When I waste time, it clears my mind of all the things I need to accomplish. Wasting time on the internet, reading a good trash crime/detective book, taking a long mid-day nap, staring out the window at birds, all these things keep me from the task at hand. But is it bad, or a needed outlet?
A few resources below. The etymology of productive, waste, and sloth.
I offer them because Ode’s theme rests in a labyrinth of Protestant work ethic hedge rows. There was a time, now long past, when productivity mattered to me. When I made pound cakes in the bakery. When I moved eight-hundred pound bales of cotton underwear cutouts for rag-cutting. When I had to have something to show for my work in the West Bank Ministry. When I wrote 1,000 words a day.
Andover found me active, working at many different tasks. Amending soil. Planting Vegetables. Caring for our Fruit Trees. Inspecting the Bee hives. Feeding and Watering the Dogs. Cooking. Yet I never felt a need to be productive. I worked at this, then that. Doing what was needed.
Even my writing took on this patina. I did it as an act of self-giving, an expression of my love for the imagination. Since moving to Colorado, I extended this approach to fire mitigation, caring for Kate, being with friends and family.
Now in what I count as my fourth phase, with a terminal illness, retirement in the past, I find myself leaning into relationships, to reading and watching TV, learning with my friends at CBE. Caring for Shadow.
Not to say that the productivity demon doesn’t raise its hoary head now and then. It does. Yet I see it for what it is. Old pathways, deep ruts from past eras. No longer what I need now. Or, desire.
produce(v.)
early 15c., producen, “develop, proceed, extend, lengthen out,” from Latin producere “lead or bring forth, draw out,” figuratively “to promote, empower; stretch out, extend,” from pro “before, forth” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward,” hence “in front of, before, forth”) + ducere “to bring, lead” (from PIE root *deuk- “to lead”).The sense of “bring into being or existence” is from late 15c. That of “put (a play) on stage” is from 1580s. Of animals or plants, “generate, bear, bring forth, give birth to,” 1520s. The meaning “cause, effect, or bring about by mental or physical labor” is from 1630s. In political economy, “create value; bring goods, manufactures, etc. into a state in which they will command a price,” by 1827. Related: Produced; producing.
waste(v.)
c. 1200, wasten, “devastate, ravage, ruin,” from Anglo-French and Old North French waster “to waste, squander, spoil, ruin” (Old French gaster; Modern French gâter), altered (by influence of Frankish *wostjan) from Latin vastare “lay waste,” from vastus “empty, desolate.” This is reconstructed in Watkins to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *eue- “to leave, abandon, give out.” Related: wasted; wasting.The Germanic word also existed in Old English as westan “to lay waste, ravage.” Spanish gastar, Italian guastare also are from Germanic.The intransitive meaning “lose strength or health; pine; weaken or be gradually consumed” is attested from c. 1300; the sense of “squander, spend or consume uselessly, expend without adequate return” is recorded from mid-14c.; the colloquial meaning “to kill” is from 1964.
To waste time “act to no purpose” is from mid-14c. Waste not, want not is attested from 1778.
Sloth refers to many related ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[29] It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.[30]
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good”.[28]
The scope of sloth is wide.[29] Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components; the most important of these is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.[29]
Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord); such disregard may lead to the slowing of spiritual progress towards eternal life, the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and animosity towards those who love God.[18]
Unlike the other seven deadly sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. The state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, while the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.[18]
Emotionally, and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself. The most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, but a lesser yet more noisome element was also noted by theologians. Gregory the Great asserted that, “from tristitia, there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair”. Chaucer also dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, laziness, and wrawnesse, the last variously translated as “anger” or better as “peevishness”. For Chaucer, human’s sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, they tell themselves, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer’s view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.[31]
Sloth subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, and slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.[31]
