Go to ritzy Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on a Saturday morning and drive by the International Pancake House. There you’ll see a phenomenon that is, literally, paralyzing the nation: people standing in a long line.
I had to go there once with my fiancée (now my wife) to meet her family. The line filled the waiting area, went out the door and down the sidewalk. The wait: forty-five minutes, minimum. Because we told her family we'd meet them there, we had to wait. I felt like a bovine waiting for an opening in the trough.
As a child, my parents took me to Cedar Point in Ohio every year. We went in May, during the week, so we'd avoid the lines.
These days, Cedar Point has shortened its season, making it hard to get those low-attendance days. In addition, they seem to have scrapped many of their little rides, opting instead for a smaller number monster attractions, like behemoth roller coasters.
The results are python lines, often hours long. Yet the people come and wait. I know one guy who went to Cedar Point on the opening day of its newest world-class roller coaster. He waited in line four hours to ride it. He wanted to be able to tell others that he rode the roller coaster on the first day it was in operation.
Weird priority, that.
I'm inclined to say none of it's my business, except I've been reading that Americans are getting more and more obsessive with their time. They're declining to join civic clubs like Kiwanis and Rotary or to volunteer at their children's schools. They don't want to do anything that will infringe on their time. I'm also seeing the results of this time-consciousness first-hand, as fewer people volunteer to help with local concerns in my community.
And why are they declining to volunteer? Apparently so they can stand in roller coaster lines or restaurant lines or wait an hour to tee off at a golf course or sit around in airports waiting for a plane to their next vacation spot. I assume they're also spending hours in front of the TV and Internet.
That's the oddity: As Americans jealously guard more and more of their time, they seem to be spending it on more and more inanity.
If they were guarding their time so they could spend it on poetry, or music, or other higher pursuits, I could appreciate it. If they were guarding their time so they could spend it with their children or aging parents, I could appreciate it.
But guarding it so they can wait in lines?
It's individualism at its fiercest: the demand to have ample time and the demand to spend it as inanely as one wishes. It's also individualism at its worst: selfishly hoarding time, often to the detriment of others.
Such a thing couldn't happen in a true community.
By analogy, consider what would happen if money were treated the same way in a hypothetical small community of ten people. In our example, we'll assume that money (like time) is a constant and that each person earns twenty-four dollars every day (cumulatively, the people in the community earn $240.00 daily). If the community has $200.00 worth of expenses every day, that means each person would need to contribute $20.00 and could keep $4.00 for his individual expenses. If two of the people decided that they wanted to keep $16.00 of their money for individual expenses, the rest of the community would have to contribute $23.00 per day to cover expenses, thus leaving everyone else with only $1.00 per day for individual expenses.
Such a thing would be unlikely to happen in a real community. Pressure would be brought. Questions would be asked: What are you doing with that extra money? What need is so pressing? What is the greater good that's prompting you to keep your money?
If the people were spending the money to care for a sick child, the community would understand. If the individuals were spending the money on something edifying for the community (maybe even something small, like beautifying their yards), the community might be accepting. But if the individuals were spending the money on frivolities? The community would object.
Other people in the community would like to keep their money, too, but they give it up for the greater good. It's not unreasonable for them to expect those two individuals to make just decisions with respect to their money.
The same thing goes for time. Unfortunately, we have a situation in which more and more people are reasoning like those two individuals: It's my time and I don't have to justify how I spend it. If I enjoy myself, that's my justification.
The fierce individualism is causing people to squirrel away their time and hoard it. When the need for volunteers arises, more and more people are keeping their hands down.
Needless to say, many people decline to volunteer for good reasons. I obviously don't know for certain what people are doing with the time they're squirreling away, but I'm reasonably confident that the vast majority aren't spending it on their elderly aunts or on higher pursuits like music and art. They're probably frittering it away on inanities: TV, Internet surfing, video games, and, of course, those eating and amusement park lines.
It's a spiritual problem. We are charged to spend our time wisely: “Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15-16). I seriously doubt St. Paul would endorse the plethora of inanities that fill many of our lives.
It's also a societal problem. These inanities leave time for little else, and the results are paralyzing our communities and, by extension, our nation.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the eEditor of The Wednesday Eudemon, a contributing editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
