You can go for a walk simply because you want to be outside. Then you notice yourself checking the step count. You can read out of curiosity, until you start thinking about how many books you have finished this year. Even rest can be given the task of making us more productive tomorrow.
Measurement does not spoil anything in itself. It can encourage us, reveal progress and support a meaningful goal. I am interested in the unnoticed moment when a measure becomes permission to value an experience. If the walk was short, was it pointless? If the book produced no useful insight, was the time wasted?
Perhaps we are so accustomed to justifying what we do that we start demanding a justification from the very things meant to give us room.
Usefulness can follow us everywhere
We do not need to resist something simply because it is useful. The problem, for me, begins when usefulness is the only language I can speak to myself. Then I can be working even in the woods: gathering energy, solving a problem, preparing for the next performance.
Of course I am allowed to solve a problem there. But could I sometimes just notice the light between the trees, without anything needing to come of it?
This is not easy when time is scarce and responsibilities are many. I do not want to turn unhurried presence into another demand on someone trying to get through the day. I am thinking of a smaller possibility: one thing that does not have to prove anything today.
An experience can be complete in itself
A conversation can matter without resolving anything. A hobby can belong in our lives even if we never become particularly good at it. An afternoon with someone close can be lovely without a photograph, a plan or a memorable event.
Perhaps these moments contain the very thing we struggle to measure and keep trying to achieve elsewhere. We are not rehearsing for life. We are already living it.
Having goals matters to me. That is why I also want to think about their limits. If I can only do things in which I can advance, I exclude much of life whose value comes from staying for a while.
Today I could leave one experience alone. Let it be good without requiring it to turn me into a better person.
