Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?*
Time, Heraclitus said, is a boy playing. He finds it amusing to torture us with deadlines and bore us with empty hours and to make us anxious when waiting and sad in detachments. We live twice as long as our ancestors and yet many of us are obsessed by time that is never enough. Then, suddenly, generally at the end of one´s career, at the time of retirement, we discover that there is quite a lot of time left.
In a fairy tale by the Grimm brothers, “The Musicians of Bremen” there are four animals, aspiring musicians of the band of Bremen, a city that they will never reach. Summary: after a long life working at the mill, a donkey is too old to continue working and therefore his master plans to kill him and at least get his skin. A dog, which no longer can chase, is about to suffer the same destiny through his master, despite his fidelity. A cat, which also has become too old to chase mice, is destined to become food and also a cock, soon will become the guest of honour at a feast organized by his master, obviously to be strangled and become the main course. The donkey
proposes the other three animals that they unit an form a band: he plays the flute, the dog plays the drums, the cat takes care of the serenades and the cock, obviously, becomes the singer. The team is complete. The band is ready and the tour may start.
During their walk, the fairy tale tells us, the cock sees a small house in the distance and normally some bandits seek shelter there. Without going into details (not even the fairy tale does so), the four animals manage to chase away the bandits with a very reactive stratagem: a concert. After having succeeded, the musicians take possession of the house, the food and the riches that are kept in it and live the rest of their lives with all comforts and in peace.
The question is then: why wait all this time for a pension, living a life full of sacrifices with the nightmare of an unworthy ending, due to a physical exhaustion that inevitably would exclude us from the productive context? When the protagonists of the fairy tale decide to leave the game and propose to use they capacities for an artistic aim, since they so far have been exploited in a very bad way, the obtain a maximum satisfaction and personal success. Is it then really necessary to wait for pension, to accumulate one´s own capacities to use them only after having arrived to the moment of “rest” or – and this it at least better – to use our creative capacities during our free time? And what is free time? Is there really a free time? Free of what, of which occupations?
One of the most interesting superimpositions produced by new media is that due to a borderline which is increasingly weak between working time and free time; with evident reflexes on our style of living, our way of relating, our way of interpreting our own role and life. A borderline which, instead of blocking, invites us to enter, to mix activities, courses, places. In this way, we discover that also free time becomes working time and that work surprisingly can reserve us freedom, initiative and fun.
When we work, we must work. When we play, we must play. It is no good trying to mix the two things. The only aim must be that to perform the job and be paid for having done so. When work is over, then we can dedicate us to games, but not before that.
(Henry Ford)What different outlook as compared by that auspicated by Henry Ford at the beginning of last century and how distant from Aris Accornero!
It is good not to separate work and life … Work and life have different logics and cultures and the richness of existence lies in the combination of time and their ambits. Their juxtaposition is a myth: a myth to exorcise.
(Aris Accornero)We must ask ourselves if this paradox between free time and working time cannot be configured as a true and proper illness. In that case, is there a possible remedy?
We save ourselves when we become aware that there is not only physical energy and determination to reserve for “free” activities and full time rage and eternal grunts for the “occupied” time (or vice versa!). We save ourselves when we, by using our experience and professionalism, manage to find the right rhythm between energy and rage, the right harmony between the distribution of free an occupied time. All this indicates the path to follow, a sole path that makes us find that which each of one of us singularly can discover, since it arrives from the depth of our capacities, from our wish to participate, our wish to let others, that we encounter along our path, benefit from our experience.
Therefore even the cohesion of the team, the wish to belong and the driving force of a group pass through a great paradox: the group exists only if there is a wish and recognition of individuality, the group exists as a sole unity, if, and only if, each one relies upon the specificity of each one of its members, who participate as individuals with the objective of making the group grow as an entity. Otherwise there will be waste, an enormous waste. Waste of personal time and waste of group time: we only have to continue and wait for retirement. To conclude, this is a brutal and crude waste of our single lives.
