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Idleness has long been regarded
as an evil, but many people don't realize just why. What's wrong
with being idle? What's wrong with hanging around day after day,
doing little to nothing constructive? The answer (as with everything
else in life) has to do with several things: not having any sense of
accomplishment, where your thoughts go when you're idle, and how you get
along with others with others when you're idle.
I've gone through several
periods of idleness in my life, none of them by choice. I've gone
through periods of a month or two with literally nothing to do, being
stuck in a city where I knew nobody at all and had no money at all to go
to the places where I could meet people. I knew that I wouldn't be
around long enough to get a job or get to know anyone well, and I was
pretty much stuck in one spot. Those periods have been the most
difficult of my life, for those have been the times when I've had the
least to do and I've been the least constructive. I've wanted to do
something, but I haven't had the resources to get anything done, so I've been
kind of stuck, feeling pretty hopeless and useless.
Sociologists find that these
feelings are very common among people who are in areas that have very poor
economies, where there are high levels of unemployment, or where the jobs
are completely unskilled and very repetitious.
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When I lived in
Spain, in an area of almost 20% unemployment, I saw an awful lot of
people--especially young men--hanging around, doing nothing. They
had no work, and worse, no hope of finding work. They felt hopeless;
they felt useless. And they mostly hung around in bars, spending the
very little money they had on wine or beer, watching television with their
friends.
I felt somewhat bad being there, especially since I was a
foreigner in their country and I had work, but that was life--I had a
skill that they didn't have, and there was no way that they could have
done the job I was doing (teaching English).
Even worse, many people with
nothing to do become seriously depressed--they have far too much time to
be introspective, far too much time to dwell on their situations and let
the feelings grow and feed upon themselves until they become dark and
overpowering.
Why is crime much more
predominant in such areas? How about feelings of hopelessness?
How about the lack of constructive activity? How about feelings of
being abandoned or shunned or ignored by the very society that claims to
care for its citizens?
I suppose that the point here is
that we have to try to understand where people in this situation are
coming from, so that we don't judge them too harshly. Some choose
their course, and don't want to have anything to do, but others aren't so
fortunate, and they're where they're at through no choice of their
own. If we want to make a serious dent in the levels of crime in our
country, in the number of people who suffer from serious depression, we
need to find ways to give people something constructive to do. We
need to give them a chance to be contributing members of society, to find
that sense of accomplishment. This won't be a cure-all, but it will
certainly help things.
You see, people who are in these
situations can't be living life fully, usually through no fault of their
own. They don't determine how the economy moves, and they don't
determine which employers move into their towns. If we can do
anything for the world, we can help people find their gifts, develop their
gifts, and actually use their gifts for constructive purposes. Over
and over, I see and read that such people are the ones who get the most
out of life, and who help others to do the same.
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