Time to Waste

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Attributed to Bertrand Russell, Lawrence Peter, and John Lennon, among others

Dearest Rachel –

The above quotation, whoever is said to have coined it, is a phrase that you and I lived by as much as possible. Given our schedules, idle hours were a few and far between, but when we had them available to us, we tried to enjoy them as much as possible. Perhaps it was easy to do, when one day after another seemed very much the same.

By contrast, given but a few hours to make our way through a port, it seems a shame to spend any amount of that limited time up in my de facto hotel room that is my cabin on the Serenade of the Seas. And yet, for a couple of hours, after arriving back from the catamaran tour, that’s exactly where I was, waiting for my cameras batteries to charge and texting Daniel about the day thus far (along with his own health concerns, as he’d caught… something… before the weekend, which was precluding him from attending church and getting together with the folks. Valid issues, to be sure, but it felt like I was letting time slip away while I was here. It was such a relief for me when I saw the battery icon indicating ‘full,’ and Daniel willing to end the conversation, so I could get out and wander around…

…at which point, I barely spent an hour and a half out there, wandering around the main street, and several blocks into the interior from the docks. It was just enough for me to lose my bearings for a moment, but not enough for me to find much terribly interesting.

And so I was back on the ship by about four, with three more hours to go before we were to cast off. Shouldn’t I have spent more time in the city? Wasn’t I wasting my time by being back in my room? After all, I was going to be on the ship for the next five or six days (depending on how you count it – we’re going to lose a day as we continue to travel further west, until we’re wrapping our way around to the East, past the International Date Line); why waste that much more precious port time back on the ship?

I wonder if it’s not a case of the inverse of that quotation we lived by; much as wasted time isn’t when you’re enjoying yourself, there’s no sin in cutting time short during which you’re unable to find something to enjoy. Granted, there are cases where doing so would be considered rude, of course, and in such cases, you have to bear with it. But this wasn’t anything like that. Here, I had to find something enjoyable – or at least interesting – about the city, and in a very limited amount of time. Failing to do so, I decided to cut my losses and head back to the ship.

In my defense, I will point out that a surprising amount of the city seemed to be closed or closing as I began to make my way about it. In hindsight, it may have been akin to the siesta concept hewed to in Latin countries (and, now that I think about it, French is as much derived from Latin as Spanish or Portuguese, so why should this surprise me?), wherein a few hours after lunch were reserved for rest, rather than having to labor under the midday sun.

Which would be well and good if we were to stay until the city were to come back to life again, but that wasn’t going to be the case. While we didn’t depart until after nightfall, the time between nightfall and departure would have been such a short window to wander around as to render the venture all but pointless. Once I’d decided to return to the ship, that was a one-way trip (especially since I’d skipped the dining room for one night already; I’d need to put in an appearance and catch the others up – and although that seems to beg the same question of ‘why,’ it does take other people’s feelings into consideration in a way that trying to squeeze more activity out of Pape‘etē didn’t).

But it left me wondering if I wasn’t wasting my time, being aboard the ship, when I only had so much to spend in this town. And yet… where did I enjoy being? If it was the ship, then I might as well get back there, make myself comfortable, and enjoy myself, and not feel so guilty for not being down there, running about the place trying to find something to do just for the sake of getting footage (which I’d already lost in terms of the ice cream roulette and the passion fruit topping – I’m still a little annoyed about apparently hitting the record button once too many, or too few times, and talking to a camera that was just staring at me, rather than actually recording my reactions).

I know it’s a strange conclusion to come to – and I should mention that it’s not as if I found anything particularly objectionable about Pape‘etē – but it did seem that, even if it felt like I was wasting time by abandoning the city, if that’s really where I wanted to be, it is where I might as well be. I do, however, hope that I don’t find myself weighing this question too many times in the future.

Anyway, I ought to get on with my evening, honey. Keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.