Take Your Time

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

That idea of scarcity, that there is never going to be enough, many observers agree, created our desire to "have it all" and is a big reason why we feel so busy today. "We're taught from birth that there's always more to have, more to need," Hunnicutt says. "We've created a Frankenstein, a monster that requires us to work continually."

MUCH WAS MADE of the importance of moral values in the 2004 election, and yet, seen through the prism of our "Frankenstein" culture of busyness, perhaps time (or lack thereof) is the ultimate moral issue. That's one of the ideas behind Take Back Your Time (www.timeday.org), a nonpartisan national campaign that aims to lobby Congress with a multipronged legislative agenda that includes, among other things, capping mandatory overtime and guaranteeing at least three weeks annual paid vacation and one week paid sick leave.

"Time is a family value," observes national coordinator John de Graaf. "Americans talk a lot about family values these days but often leave [that] one out."

Although he knows getting the initiatives passed will be an uphill battle, de Graaf remains optimistic. Time, he observes, is an overarching issue that cuts across ideological lines and draws interest from a diverse mix of people. At Take Back Your Time's first annual conference last year, de Graaf points out, the participants included corporate executives, representatives from the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, evangelicals, and even Wiccans.

"People got along great," de Graaf says. "They really sense that this issue is a place where people can come together and where we all suffer from what exists out there."

Another optimistic trend in the time wars is the burgeoning worldwide Slow movement, which self-described "rehabilitated speedaholic" Carl Honore vividly tracks in his recent book In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed (Harper-SanFrancisco, 2004). Neither a preindustrial Luddite retreat nor a mandate to operate at a snail's pace, as it is commonly misperceived, the Slow philosophy, HonorŽ says, is all about "balance." "Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for," he writes. "Seek to live at what musicians call the tempo giusto -- the right speed."

Both Honore and de Graaf look to Europe for inspiration when it comes to how to deal with our time poverty. And, in spite of a handful of recent incidents in which multinational companies essentially blackmailed their European employees into working extra hours, neither thinks Europe will start taking its cues from the United States, as was widely hinted at in the American press. De Graaf believes the almost gleeful media coverage of the incidents was aimed at subduing American workers.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print