by Marc Fisher
Are you afraid to stop?
Maybe you are afraid to take vacations, for a very basic reason:
For example, you are an executive employee at a small or large company, and you are afraid that if you are absent for too long, for instance longer than one week (don’t even think about two weeks —that would be suicide!), people might start to think that you aren’t indispensable, and that you are in fact “disposable,” as they say, and that they can just flush you, dismiss you, and thank you on your way out.
That’s it —if they realize that the firm could run for a whole week without you…
In order to make sure that this doesn’t happen, you make sure you are available seven days per week, day and night, and even when you’re on vacation, where your boss and your colleagues can reach you on your cell phone, by e-mail, at the cottage, on the beach —anywhere!
But in reality, work phobia is so widespread that it affects even those who are not afraid of losing their jobs.
A good friend of mine teaches at university, and in principle, has job security.
She teaches eleven hours of courses per week, has four months of vacation per year, and writes articles in order to stay visible in the intellectual community, but she works at least 65 hours per week, even though she has been teaching for ten years, and in principle, her lectures are already prepared…
In fact, this friend has less freedom than the President of the United States, and that’s no exaggeration!
For example, she always turns down my invitations to play golf, while Mr. President appears to play every weekend.
In fact, she never has a minute to herself: no time to do sports, and never takes a vacation, even when her students take them —long ones at that!
Is the world upside down, or what?
What’s the point of studying for fifteen or twenty years if it’s only to be a slave, or to have so little freedom?
Sometimes I tell myself that this good friend (who treats herself very badly, it would seem!) doesn’t believe that she deserves to have a good time or to take a vacation, and that’s where the real problem lies.
Because if the President of the United States of America has the time to play golf, then in theory, everyone should have the time, because his is the most stressful and demanding job on the planet…
Are you busier than the President of the United States of America?
Are your tasks so important that you can never stop, that you never have the time to play golf or take a vacation?
And if you work so much, isn’t it because, deep down, you are afraid of losing your place?
But isn’t that a symptom of a deeper, ancient psychological problem, a lack of confidence in yourself and in your value, that you need to resolve before you drop from exhaustion because you are always on the front lines?
Yes, are you afraid of relaxing, and enjoying your life? Because, for example, your father always worked hard until he got sick, and if you earn ten times, five times, or only twice as much money as him by working half as hard, you would feel uncomfortable…
Would you feel like a thief, or an impostor?
If you have an easy life, and fill your life with travel, vacations, and free time, would you feel guilty?
Are you afraid to stop?
CHAPTER 7
TO GET THERE ON TIME, LEAVE… EARLY!
(unless you’re addicted to stress!)
A few years ago, I had an agent named Guy, and he was addicted to stress.
I didn’t realize it at first.
Whenever we had to take a flight to Los Angeles or New York, let’s say at 11:00 in the morning, he would ask me to pick him up at 9:30.
It took thirty minutes to drive from his place to the airport.
Thirty minutes… if everything went well and if there were no traffic jams or accidents!
The airlines normally ask passengers to arrive one hour early for continental flights, which meant that we had exactly enough time… We couldn’t afford even the tiniest delay…
But something always comes up, and the first problem was that my agent was never ready when I went to pick him up!
Either his suitcase wasn’t packed, or he was on the telephone — a very important call, of course — and he had to make another equally important call while I waited. Nice!
At last we would leave, and I would have to speed, and go through yellow lights, dangerously overtake vehicles, and then, at the airport, I had to pray that we would find a parking space quickly, which isn’t always easy during peak periods, and then hope that there was no line-up at the check-in counter, and finally, cross our fingers hoping that the customs officer wouldn’t hold us up much: once your bags are checked in, the plane will wait for you, but still…
I soon realized that my agent loved this game of “beat the clock,” that he was in fact addicted to stress, because it gave him the impression of being a very busy and important person!
I couldn’t handle it!
The race against time was killing me, and getting on my nerves, and putting me in a bad mood, because I felt like a slave to time, when I much prefer being its master (after all, it’s “my” time, and I like to take my time, as I explained earlier)!
Yes, the situation irritated me to the extent that, once I realized that my agent’s tardiness was not accidental, and that it was his modus operandi when it came to travelling, I told him: “Either we leave when I say, or we meet each other at the airport…”
Case closed.
I am quite the opposite. If I have a meeting downtown at 12:00 noon, and I need an hour to get there, I give myself an hour and fifteen minutes…
I know that important people always arrive late, or at least are the last to arrive at meetings, and ask their drivers to go around the block in order to not arrive on time, to protect their image, no less, because it’s important to arrive late, unless it could result in being fired…
Politicians who are overloaded do it all the time, going through life at 200 miles per hour, which ends up aging them as quickly as they renege on their promises! If you don’t believe me, look at photos of them at the end of their terms, if of course they make it that far: they are transformed by power, and not for the better, and they often would not survive the stress of their jobs if not for the miracles performed by their doctors. A fascinating book has been written about this: Ces malades qui nous gouvernent.
I don’t envy them —politicians, that is —because I want to live, and because of that, I want to age slowly!
It seems to me that nothing is worth killing my good mood, or making my heart rate go up, not to mention the fact that, at birth (according to wise men), we are allocated a specific number of heartbeats: it’s up to you to use them at whatever speed you want! It’s interesting to learn that we play a role in the number of years we will live!
Yes, I do my best to arrive on time, without having to run, because otherwise, I would feel like the slave, or the victim of the person who asked me to meet them.
Isn’t it said, “punctuality is the politeness of kings”…?
The politeness of kings or not, what I truly hate is the race to not be late. I rush slowly, so to speak.
That’s why I always try to leave early, so that I can get there early, or at least on time if something happens along the way, and something inevitably does.
Because I have noticed that, just like people always claim to be lighter than their actual weight when they are asked, people nearly always inaccurately estimate the amount of time it will take them to get to where they’re going… There are even some who, even though they know they will need a minimum of one hour to get to where they are going, do not think that they are late, even though they haven’t left half an hour before their appointment!
Why?
They don’t know how to manage their time.
I try hard, because I know that this is one of the essential keys to happiness.
So I leave early.
If something hold
s me up, if I run into traffic, or an accident, I still arrive on time. And I don’t get uptight! I don’t enter the “road rage” state of mind, which leads to horrific murders in the United States every year.
I always ask myself how it is that, in the morning, people are so impatient and angry as soon as there is the slightest slowdown or bottleneck. If it were because they are in the process of being late for a date, I could understand it, because there’s no crime worse than keeping a lady waiting, especially if she’s beautiful!
But when they are in a hurry to get to the office in order to do a job… that they don’t like?
Work that they even hate…
Honestly, it’s beyond me.
It must be the motorist’s paradox!
If we stop to think about it, these people are a little like my agent…
They aren’t addicted to stress.
But they are addicts nonetheless.
Even though they would never admit it, they are addicted to the bad moods that traffic jams cause them!
Morning after morning!
Yes, it seems to me that these bottlenecks are a derivative that allows them to conveniently express their deepest frustrations, their revolt, their hatred of others, motorists or otherwise, and of the universe in general. Which, as a matter of fact, has done nothing to them, because it is simply itself, and does what it can, which can’t be easy, because the universe is enormous, and when it has a problem, it can’t exactly be a little one! But we never hear it complaining…
I can’t help thinking that these enraged motorists must not love their wives, their bosses, colleagues, clients, bank accounts, homes —their lives, essentially! —and these bottlenecks are the pretext for expressing it in a morning concert of horns, expletives, and one-finger salutes!
When they were younger, when they had neither jobs nor cars, they dreamed of the day when they would have one and the other: a job and a car. They have them now, but they have forgotten that what was once their dream is now their daily nightmare!
Of course, not everyone kills or wants to kill when they’re behind the wheel, but although I’m not a doctor, I imagine that all of the levels of rage that lead up to envy or a murderous act do not exactly pump beneficial substances into our bloodstreams.
I imagine that these poisons tax (look —another tax!) our blood pressure, our heart, and our stomach, and that we might take less Prozac if we took our time more, which is absolutely free and non-taxable, at least under the current government!
A Japanese koan says: “We stand in our own shadow and wonder why it is dark.”
Do you stand in your own shadow?
Are you addicted to stress?
Do you always leave at the last minute, even if you know that you will be late, and that you will be stressed along the way because (and you say it yourself) you hate being late!
But if you hate arriving late, then why do you always leave at the last minute?
Isn’t it because you need this adrenaline, the same way some people need a cigarette or alcohol?
Do you have a tendency to self-destruct?
Do you subconsciously take on too much, and overload your schedule so that your stress level is always high, and practically at the maximum?
If this is true, are you aware that this stress infiltrates you like a Trojan Horse, and that soon it will cause your demise, if it hasn’t already?
As for me, I take my time, and more importantly, I leave early, as a precaution that is not exactly exhilarating, but that works anyway —like many people who aren’t wonderful, but who get by anyway —I don’t know how they do it!
Of course I’m joking. If I was a genius, I think I would have known the answer since I first began writing!
It reminds me of a story.
One day, when I was invited to attend a conference on literacy (is that how you spell it?), a lady stood up at the microphone to tell her story. At the age of twenty, she still didn’t know how to read. I told her, “If it makes you feel any better, even after writing about twenty novels, some critics have told me that I don’t know how to write!”
So I leave early for my appointments.
Ahead of my schedule (any earlier and I’d be before my time!), I take an extra dose of calm, which serves as insurance for my good mood!
And that’s why people say I look like I have all the time in the world. If, after having left early, I arrive fifteen minutes too early, I don’t feel like a loser or an idiot, and I don’t stress about it. I sometimes take the opportunity to park a little farther away and walk.
These fifteen minutes —which are delicious because they are stolen from an agenda that steals life from most people! —these fifteen minutes of impromptu walking not only allow me to stave off the portliness that creeps up on most novelists, but also allow me to air out my brain and mentally review everything that I need to discuss.
Or better yet, I give myself the right (there’s no need to be generous only with others!) to loiter, to breathe in some fresh air (or whatever’s left of it in the city!), and to sit on the terrace of a busy coffee shop, watch the people —a pastime, and in fact, a part of the work of any self-respecting novelist —and read the newspaper.
I also use the time to calmly return calls on my cell phone, instead of having frenetically attempted to do this before leaving, and thereby risking being late, and most certainly stressing myself out.
Which is another golden rule when it comes to managing one’s time like a man who is always on vacation —you must change the order in which you accomplish your tasks.
Yes, it’s quite plain and simple: change the order in which you execute your tasks.
Try an experiment, and enjoy the freedom and the calm that accompany this simple, simple task.
CHAPTER 8
WHY I SHAVE IN MY CAR
I have two razors.
One at home and one in my car.
Why?
Having wisely calculated the amount of time it takes me to shave— specifically three and a half minutes and change (or rather hair!) —I determined that I would save 25 minutes per week, or 1,300 minutes per year, which represents twenty hours, by shaving in my car.
Because we are only awake for 16 hours per day on average, people (except for those with beards, and women) who shave for 50 years of their lives spend a total of sixty days shaving.
Scary, isn’t it?
And that’s why I usually shave in my car. If I could, I’d brush my teeth too, but I’d need a sink, and I have a feeling that it might actually be dangerous.
Those who are familiar with this somewhat strange practice think I’m crazy, or at least a little special, when in reality, I’m just a man who likes to have free time and not be in a rush!
For that same reason, I usually buy 15 or 20 bottles of mouthwash in a single outing, and only if they’re on sale (even still!).
I know, it isn’t really voluntary simplicity, but it simplifies my life!
And it not only allows me to save money, because full-priced Listerine is expensive (I never quite understood why — it must be a ploy to earn higher profits!).
It also allows me to save time and frustration, because I find it somewhat uninspiring to go to the pharmacy every month in order to replenish my supply of mouthwash, especially when the cashier places her “cash closed” sign on the counter immediately before it’s my turn to pay, after having stood patiently in line for ten minutes!
Why does it always happen to me!
I know I might look like a harmless crazy person, or like someone who is obsessed with time…
But in reality, I am just trying to manage my time as effectively as possible, and to spend the least amount of time possible on unpleasant tasks, so that I have more left over for… pleasant activities!
My daughter Julia uses a similar trick to manage her sock drawer: it doesn’t bother her in the morning to grab two socks that aren’t even the same colour!
Finding her clever, I drew inspi
ration from her, not by wearing two differently coloured socks, but by buying several pairs that are the same colour, because I noticed, undoubtedly like most of you do, that I often wasted a lot of time —and patience! —every morning, as I tried to find matching socks, only to discover that one of them has holes in it!
Shaving in the car also has other advantages: it’s a humanitarian gesture…
Here’s how.
It never fails to entertain the people who are standing on street corners waiting for the bus.
When they see me working on my chin or top lip with an electric razor, they almost invariably begin to smile.
Not always, though.
One day, for example, I came close to starting a fight between a couple.
A pretty lady was waiting for the bus with her boyfriend (I assume they were boyfriend and girlfriend, because they were holding hands!).
She saw me shaving, and elbowed her friend so that he could gawk at me too: I quickly lowered my arm, and he didn’t see the razor, he shrugged his shoulders, and turned around, skeptical.
I promptly started shaving again.
She elbowed him again.
He spun around, and I quickly lowered my arm. He gave his companion a look as if to say: “Are you playing with my head, or what?”
But in the end, always the gentleman, and in order to prevent the drama from escalating, I shaved for a long time, in full view of everyone! And the pretty lady smiled triumphantly: she was right once again, and he was forced to admit it.
If I stop to think about it, I’m not really that original…
In reality, I was doing nothing (once again!) but copying women!
They don’t shave in the car, of course, unless their names are George, but that’s a whole other story…
But they put on their… make-up! They use the narrow rear-view mirror on the sun visor, and your erratic driving and overly hasty stops make them stop too, looking at you with brush in hand, with a smile that says it all!
Whatever you do, don’t say anything, just smile, preferably with a guilty look on your face, even if it’s about the road and not about your chaotic driving: that would be a recipe for disaster!