Do you remember when Lowe’s came out with their new slogan Never Stop Improving?

I have to tell you that kind of corporate advertising crap really grinds my Eumentical™ gears. What’s the matter with these people? Don’t they know how to relax?

There’s this fellow, an Irish storyteller by the name of Tomáseen Foley, and he used a phrase once about the modern world that really stuck with me. He said he was wary of “the rising tide of busy-ness that threatens to engulf us all.”

I live in a town of about 7500 people. I moved here 35 years ago and back then there were about 7500 residents. But the population of the county has dropped by 20%, from 50,000 to 40,000. It’s an economically depressed area. School enrollments are down. Small businesses are shuttered. But the town is WAY BUSIER now than it was then! We have more streetlights and more traffic. We have new “big-box” stores. The town infrastructure (roads, sewers, water supply) just got a major upgrade. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

We are busier, like Foley said. We’ve been convinced by our puritan ancestors and our corporate overlords that lying about lazily and enjoying the simple things is subversive. So we go out there and make lots of economic activity and run around and do a lot of stuff we don’t need to do just so we can feel better about our lives.

Whatever happened to REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE? Don’t we have enough crap? Aren’t there enough things to do that require only time and labor and don’t require a trip to the shopping center? Why do we let these bloodsuckers decide how we live?

This is where EUMENTICS™ comes in. We’ve covered the first three Lessons. Today is number four. Ready?

Lesson Four: be sure to waste time.

Nothing is better for your mental well-being than telling the world to fuck off and leave you alone! Greta Garbo said “I vant to be LET alone.” (Not “I vant to be alone.) If anyone understood the trappings of modernity, it was the Swedish Sphinx.

There’s a beautiful song by the band Phish called “Waste.” Some people call it a Slacker Anthem. Well, I think slackers get a bad rap.

Anyway, here’s some lyrics: Don’t wanna be a farmer workin’ in the Sun/Don’t wanna be an outlaw, always on the run/Don’t wanna be a climber reachin’ for the top/Don’t wanna be anything where I don’t know when to stop.

And then the singer goes on to implore his partner to “come waste your time with me.”

Yup. That’s very Eumentical™!

Like SIR says: “time’s too short to not waste!”