Children Playing on the Beach, 1884, Mary Cassatt
“Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work,” – Kierkegaard
The Marginalian writes: The cult of busyness and productivity plays out as chief drama of our existence. We crumble into bed at night having completed the day's to-do list yet feeling like a thoroughly incomplete human being.
Hermann Hesse addresses how we can heal our aching spirit in the 1905 essay titled “On Little Joys,” found in My Belief: Essays on Life and Art.
The neurotic obsession to spend every minute of time productively is the thief of joy.
Great masses of people these days live out their lives in a dull and loveless stupor. Sensitive persons find our inartistic manner of existence oppressive and painful, and they withdraw from sight… I believe what we lack is joy. The ardor that a heightened awareness imparts to life, the conception of life as a happy thing, as a festival… But the high value put upon every minute of time, the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy.
He laments about the modern life's "aggresive haste" has “done away with what meager leisure we had"
Our ways of enjoying ourselves are hardly less irritating and nerve-racking than the pressure of our work. “As much as possible, as fast as possible” is the motto. And so there is more and more entertainment and less and less joy… This morbid pursuit of enjoyment [is] spurred on by constant dissatisfaction and yet perpetually satiated.
He offers us a solution:
I would simply like to reclaim an old and, alas, quite unfashionable private formula: Moderate enjoyment is double enjoyment. And: Do not overlook the little joys!
The most overlooked and omnipresent of those joys is our everyday contact with nature.
Instead of keeping our misused and overstrained eyes on screens, on the pavement, or on faces of passers-by, take notice and contemplate the small delights around you: the sky, the trees and flowers, the buildings, the streets, the squirrels, etc.
Just try it once — a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen anywhere. It does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or another the light of the sun always makes itself felt. Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed if you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes.
These small joys can take many forms:
[There are] many other small joys, perhaps the especially delightful one of smelling a flower or a piece of fruit, of listening to one’s own or others’ voices, of hearkening to the prattle of children. And a tune being hummed or whistled in the distance, and a thousand other tiny things from which one can weave a bright necklace of little pleasures for one’s life.
Seek out small joys:
My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys, and thriftily save up the larger, more demanding pleasures for holidays and appropriate hours. It is the small joys first of all that are granted us for recreation, for daily relief and disburdenment, not the great ones.