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Show The Salt Lake Tribune OPINION Al5 Wednesday, May 8, 2002 Sometimes Doing Nothing Is the Best Thing You Can Do Summeris comingsoon.[ canfeelit nthe softening of theair, but I can see t, too, in the textbooks on mychildren’s desks. The number of uncut pages at the back grows smaller and smaller. Theioose-leaf is ragged at the odges, ANNA QUINDLEN ers. An old remembered glee rises in- Howboring it was. NEWSWEEK thatis saying something. Ofcourse,it was the makingof me, as a humanbeing anda writer. Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, for unscheduled time. Earlier this year the privileged suburb of Ridge- kicking at the curb, lying on the grass wood, yrsitting on the stoopand staring ai the tedious blue of the summer sky. I jon't believe you can write poetry, or ‘ompose Music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty ofit, a hiatus that passes for boredombutis really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuelcreativity. Andthat, to me,is one of the saddest things about the lives of American children today. Soccer leagues, acting classes, tutors —the calendar of the average middle-class kid is so over the top that soon Palm handheldswill be sold in Toys “R” Us. Our children are as overscheduled as we are, and This has become so bad that parents have arranged to schedule times N.J., announced a "CREATORSSYNDICATE work, no athletic practices and no parents recently lobbied for additional recess. Hooray, and yikes. Howdid this happen? Adults did it. There is a culture ofadult distrustthat suggests that a kid whois not playing softball or attending science- week, but one single night. There is site: familylifelst.org. Amongthe frequentiy asked questions provided on- line: “What would families do with enrichment programs — or both — is uffing or boostingcars:Ifkidsare left alone, they will not stare into the middle distance and consider the family timeif they took it back?” Let me make a suggestion for the kids involved: How about nothing? It is not simply that it is pathetic to con- sider the lives of children who don’t meaning oflife and how come your nose in pictures never looks the way have 4 moment between piano and you think it should, but instead will Normandy and — aboveall — at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whenpeople talk about a “peace sitting down at a table and signing a peace agreement. From this, some about somethirig that matches their preconception that negotiations end wars. But, if we are really interested in peace, then wehaveto lookat the hard whetherin the Middle Eastorels busy child. In Omaha, Neb., a group of even a free-time movement, and Web process,” they are usually talking table and beginning negotiations. In other words, start “the peace proces: schoolers to gab aboutprestigiouscolleges without a trace of irony: This ical research sug- Third Worldit is often aboutchild labor,butin the United Statesit is about the sheer laborof being a perpetually after-school events. This wasterribly exciting until I realized that this was not one night a Wars usually end with both sides people seem to think that the way to get peaceis to start sitting downat a ample ps! global Right to Play movement:In the Family Night, when there would be no home- The Endless Peace Process _THOMAS SOWELL getinto trouble. gesting that what we mightcall “doing nothing” is when human beings actually do their best thinking, and when creativity comes to call. Perhaps we are creating an entire generation of people whose ability to think outside the box, as the current parlance of business has it, is being systematically stunted by scheduling. A study by the University of Michigan quantified the downtimedeficit: In the past 20 years American kids have lost about four unstructured hours a week. There has evenarisen a the binder plastic ripped at the side me. Summer is coming. Uniform skirts in mothballs. Pencils with their points left broken. Open windows. Day trips to the beach. Pickup games, Hanging out. dance and homework to talk about their dayor just searchfor split ends, anenormously fy activity < my — ‘There is also evidence of what has in fact led to peace. What ended the Cold War with the Soviet Union? Wasit all the “summit meetings”that took place for dec- dle East? Whenneither side has anything more to gain by war. That is when peace comes everywhere. Arafat obviously has not, given his rejection of those concessions, which negotiations but because of what had already happened at Iwo Jima, at pitalized end up signing out of the dence that they are really for the convenience of parents with waytoo little leisure timeof their own. Stories about the resignation cf presidential aide Karen Hughes unfailingly reported her dedication to family time by noting that she arranged to get homeat5:30 one night a week to have dinner with her son.If one weekdaydinneroutoffive is considered laudable, what does that say about what’s become commonplace? Summeris coming.It used to be a time apart for kids, a respite from the clock and the copybook, the organized day. Every once in a while, either guilty or overwhelmed ortired oflistening to me keen about my monu- mental boredom, my mother would send meto somerinky-dink park program that consisted almostentirely of TheIsraelis have already reached that point, judging by their willingness to make large concessions to mostobservers considered extraordi- Israel. If Arafatrealizes that he cannotex nate him if he permanently calls off the war against Israel. The much discussed “Arab street” may not be willing to have peacewith Israel — at least not until they havetired of repeatedly suffering painful and devastating con- sequences from continuing the war. But so long as “world opinion” repeatedly intervenes to spare them the full consequences of their own aggression, that day can be postponedindef- tivity with which our children are saddled while their parents pursue frantic andoften joyless activity of their own, what about summer? Do mostadults really wantto stand inline for Space Mountain or sit in traffic to get to a shore housethat doesn’t have enough saucepans? Might it be even more enriching for their children to stay at home and do nothing? For those who say they will only watch TV or play on the computer, a piece of technical advice: The cable box can be unhooked, the modem removed. Perhapsit is not too late for American kids to be given the gift of enforced boredom for at least a week ortwo,staring into ‘e, boredout of their gourds, exploring the inside of their own heads. “To contemplateis to toil, to think is to do,” said Victor Hugo. “Go outside and play,” said Prudence Quindlen. Both of them wereright. Palestine had “made the desert fierce andlasting hatredthan assaulting people's egos by blatantly outperMost ofthe great mindless slaughters of the 20th century whetherof the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the kulaks in the Soviet Union, the Jews in Germany, the {bosin Ni- geria or the Tamils in Sri Lanka have been slaughters of those who dramatically eclipsed the accomplish- ments ofothers. Ordinary life has been even more disrupted by thecivil war in Sri Lanka thanin Israel and has been marked by even moreatrocities. Recently, there have begun to appear the first signs of a desire on both sides for peacein Sri Lanka.This was not brought about by initely. Those who see negotiations as a magic process leading to peace often fail to understand that negotiations between nations are not like Those who look for “root causes” might considerthis: Several years before there was state of Israel, Winston Churchill said that the Jews in " by externally im- posed ceasefires or by photoopsat the White House. It was brought about by decadesofsuffering by bothsides until they were exhausted $20 new: $3 5 INTRODUCING! 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Whenwill peace come to the Mid- 1980s that put the Soviet economy un- that the reason the Cold War ended? all these enrichmentactivities are for Maybethat kind of summeris gone edge of a new way of living that not only has no room for contemplation forming them. world? Or was it Ronald Reagan's much-lamented “arms race” of the Yes, Reagan ended up signing an agreement with Gorbachev, but was tivity). Try as we mightto suggest that with stick. for good. Maybe this is the leading Palestinians would love nothing better than to survive by exterminating Part of the problem is the confusion World War II? It was not because of school. Finally, there is a culture of workplace presence (as opposed to produc- shirts. I mourn drawing in the dirt the Middle East would be one of the most peaceful places on Earth. Nowherehave there been more negotiations, more countries involved, more World WarII and avoidall that bloodshed at Iwo Jima and Normandy? finally sit down and sign a peace treaty on the battleship Missouri, ending suggests that any class in which you do not enroll your first-grader wil! put him at a disadvantage in, say, law without a sponsor and matching bloom.” Had they not done so, there might be peace in the Middle East today. Nothing has promoted more If Middle East negotiations — endlessly described as “the peace process” — actually promoted peace, then ades on end, while the Soviets sponsored wars of aggression around the der more strain than it could handle? that leads even the parents of pre- there are music camps, sports camps, fat camps, probably thin camps. [ mourn hangingout in the back yard. I mourn playing Wiffle ball in the street negotiations between labor and management, where both sidesrealize that in the end they each need theother to survive. 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