The importance of doing and talking about unimportant things
I wrote something last week in Another Spodek Method commitment: a walk in the park with family that prompted reflection:
Talking while walking in a park is different than in the city or indoors when multiple family members are figuring out who sits where and what to do for dinner and all that nicknack stuff that goes into events. It’s peaceful, meandering, and unimportant in a way that makes it more important for life, just not for what drives much of American life, like productivity, efficiency, GDP growth.
The prompt to reflect came from my contrasting what made for meaningful and delightful conversation with raising the GDP, efficiency, and innovation. Many people consider these last topics as core important topics for conversation.
When I compare them with talking about the actual, physical world around me, they seem irrelevant to things like the seasons, the path of the sun or starts across the sky, and other things we don’t call important. But when we aren’t distracted by so-called important things, they’re what life is about.
I have to stride to keep free from too much “important” talk in favor of “unimportant” topics.
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