Wasted Days?

My reading day was only partially successful, but I did get well into Patricia Hampl's The Art of the Wasted Day. A telling title if ever there was one, because if a part of me didn't think reading days were "wasted" I'd probably have a lot more of them.

But if Hampl's title tips its hat to this prejudice, her content helps dispel it. She ponders leisure and daydreaming; she counters the belief that what matters in life is the checklist. The essential American word isn't happiness, but pursuit. How about giving up the struggle, she says, redefining happiness as "looking out the window and taking things in — not pursuing them."

The life of the mind is what Hampl is after here, and she succeeds well in pinning it down, following its application through the essays of Montaigne and the science of Mendel. She looks closely at notions of the self and how we often have to be knocked in the head (Montaigne and St. Paul both took falls) to see the world with fresh eyes.

Because this is where the "wasting" leads us — to a different set of beliefs and to "keeping a part of your mind always to yourself," which becomes a mantra to Hampl. It might be to more of us if we had the time to try.