Afternoon

I have off today, which I’m not at all used to — a weekday off — and I don’t know, frankly, what to do with myself. In my younger, bohemian days I did — I was more comfortable doing nothing, or variations on nothing (‘nothing’: like reading or meditating or walking; nothing productive). The time off throws me into an existential quandary: given the free time which I always complain about not having, I don’t know (exactly) what to do. Or at least not at first. As Whitman writes,

I am of old and young, of foolish as much as the wise

I worry that maybe this is the end of whatever sort of magical period I could call my youth; that what youth is, is lightness and carefreeness that carries oneself through any situation — including an empty afternoon, without plans, cares, or productive demands. I worry that what youth is, in fact, is the biological organisms inborn power to resist productive demands, plans, etcetera — an inborn power that eventually gets used up.

Are you old when you begin to putter and fret? Are you old when you no longer are happy just laying in the sunshine?