Do something useless

This is a defense of doing something useless. Everyone is caught up today with doing something useful: acting for a cause, purpose, or deadline. We're always chasing some goal, usually one tied to productivity. I fear that we've forgotten to save time for the useless activity, the kind done purely for its own sake. The activity you do simply because you can and want to, not because it will bring you closer to something else.

As I grow older, time feels more and more like a strict lecturer: hurry up before time runs out, but don't go too fast, otherwise you'll miss the moment. Like a child given too many conflicting orders, I freeze. Staring down the clock, I'm worried about the impending doom, yet I feel too tired to do anything about it.

When I was a kid, I didn't care about time. Time was just a reading on a clock, and I just wanted to play video games. I didn't care that I was spending my mornings glued to the computer, spending way too much time with my friends grinding away at the same minigame; it was living, and that's all I cared about.

Now, that "spending" has turned into "wasting," and I desperately try to optimize my time, interrogating myself over prior choices. If it's not in pursuit of something, is it really worth doing?

This leads me to the defense of choosing to do something useless: picking up an unproductive hobby as a ritual of claiming time for yourself. But beware: you must not think that this activity is a way of self-care, one that is secretly good for you, otherwise it may cease to be useless. Much like meditation, where you are taught not to practice for an outcome but simply to meditate, you must engross yourself in this useless activity just as it is. It is valuable precisely because it serves no purpose. It should be knitting. It should be reading. It should be cooking. It should be anything because it's you that matters, not the activity. What matters is you being engrossed in the moment of the activity, not for the outcome, but for the moment itself.

In doing something useless, we reject the idea that we must pay a tax to exist: that to earn permission to do something, it must be in pursuit of something, or that to make our lives worth living, we have to do something great. There's tension between building yourself up to serve a future you and being satisfied with who you are right now. Doing something useless shifts us to the contemplation of the present moment and reminds us that having our mind constantly fixated on the future robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. I don't have to pretend that everything I do is righteous. I don't have to be useful all the time.