How do I enjoy myself?

Admist all the work I should do, an article overdue, a poem to hand in, a paper to research on, readings untouched, and everything else I could continue rambling about, I decided all those could wait while I pause to teach myself how to enjoy the moment. I realized, while talking to a child tonight, I have somehow gotten into a habit of rushing the present, developed an impatience for the right-now moment. This sounds like it could be the Abstract for a “The Problems of Modernity” book, but I’m not sure if this is a modernity problem. The irony of it all is that I am actually enjoying the moment, yet unconsciously rushing it. There is always a nagging background voice asking, “what’s the time now?”, or thinking “this conversation is getting too long”. In a slightly exaggerated and harsh manner of expression, I have quite simply forgotten how to enjoy myself. Gasp! The Horror, the horror!

I wonder if it’s my lack of concentration or inability to focus for extended periods of time (ten minutes?) that has gotten me into this mode of thinking about what is going to happen next when the present is still unfolding (for me, too slowly). Or I wonder if it’s because I am so used to the rush culture--teleporting from one place to another, transforming from one social role to the next, that I have quite gradually and definitely subconsciously forgotten what it means to savour an experience. I’m not even talking about taking time off to watch a droplet fall off a leaf, or smelling the after-rain air. I’m referring to things like appreciating a conversation without having to rush to end it off, or enjoying a person’s companionship without forming imaginary to-do lists on my mind, and the like.

To this, Giddens says,

“[In pre-modern world], no one could tell the time of day without reference to other socio-spatial markers: “when” was almost universally connected with “where” or identified by regular natural occurrences.”

“Time was still connected with space (and place) until the uniformity of time measurement by the mechanical clock was matched by uniformity in the social organization of time.”

“The ‘emptying of time’ is in large part the precondition for the ‘emptying of space’…the development of ‘empty space’ may be understood in terms of the separation of space from place.”

“The advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between “absent” others.”

“[The separation of time and space] is the prime condition of the processes of disembedding…by disembedding I mean the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.”

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I think of this line “What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts” from the song "Silent All These Years" and I feel that these thoughts carry me nowhere. Probably how a Science/Computing (okay, huge generalizations, scientists of the world, be forgiving) would cast a critical eye on the Arts and Social Sciences, scoffing behind their calculators, thinking these people are perpetually engaging in their endless meaningless discussions that does nothing but go on in the space of a classroom, write papers that only one other person in the world has read, and the like…I don’t think I wish to continue. I feel so bored typing this out, you see, I am rushing this Now moment even if I’m enjoying the self-reflexivity, the writing, ah whatever. Merry Christmas (even if it's two months early).