(personal underlines)
The pointlessness of being early
You’re missing out on life
We all know that the saddest words in the English language are ‘too late’. We also know that ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ and that ‘punctuality is the politeness of kings. However, since this piece was published a couple of weeks ago, many have got in touch to point out that, very often, ‘the tidy’ are also ‘the early’. Their irrational obsession with being tidy is matched by an equally irrational terror of being late.
They’re missing out on the joy of spontaneity, the thrill of uncertainty and of going with the flow
I’m not advocating a slack attitude to timekeeping. If you’re late for your train, your plane or your appointment at the Palace to receive your OBE, you really will miss it. However, if you’re perennially and pointlessly early, you’ll waste a significant chunk of your existence in a dull, lifeless limbo hanging around and killing time. And since your time is your life, isn’t continually killing it quite a wretched thing to do?
The problem with ‘the early’ is their pessimism. They’re forever fretting that something will go wrong – the train might be cancelled, they won’t get a good seat, there’ll be a monsoon on the M6 or a UFO on the M25. Their fears, of course, are usually baseless so their time is usually wasted. Their mantra – even though they don’t know it – is ‘hurry up and wait’.
Those of us who prefer to cut it fine are bright, sunny optimists. It rarely occurs to us that there’ll be impediments to our journeys or to our lives. And for the most part, there aren’t. Occasionally we come unstuck but isn’t that better than living in a state of constant anxiety – endlessly waiting, having needlessly panicked?
Anyone who lives with a temporal tyrant knows that this panic, like measles, is contagious and can affect the well-being of everyone around them. Their constant hurrying and harrying is likely to cause others to rush out without keys, phones or passports.
I speak as one who was once harassed by his cohabitant into leaving early for the airport and arriving there one hour before the check-in opened. That airport was Luton. Can you imagine a more soul-destroying place to kill time?
It’s at airports that you’ll witness the early at their most absurd. Even though airlines demand you check in two hours in advance for their convenience rather than yours, that still isn’t early enough for the early. You’ll see them glaring up at the departures board, unable to avert their eyes until their gate is shown. Once it is, they’ll charge towards it like greyhounds chasing a hare. But when they get there, despite having a boarding pass with an allocated seat, they can’t simply sit down and relax. They prefer, for absolutely no reason, to stand and queue. It’s the same at the other end. As soon as the aircraft comes to a halt, they’re out of their seats, pulling luggage from overhead lockers and standing impotently until they can disembark.
On one flight, I was, for the only time in my life, upgraded to business class. On my original boarding pass, it said to be at the gate 30 minutes before departure. On my new one, it said 15 minutes. Only a tiny thing – but so significant. I’d been awarded an extra 15 minutes of time, an extra 15 minutes of life. Since wealthy people are prepared to pay so handsomely to have more time in their lives, it seems absurd that the early give so much of theirs away. But they do.
How much of those lives have been squandered sitting in empty theatres long before the performance begins? Or in empty football grounds at least an hour before kick-off? Those same people will then leave the ground around the 88th minute ‘to beat the rush’ with the score at 1-1. Serves them right when they miss a spectacular injury-time winner.
And that’s the irony. The pointless panicking, the stress and strain they place on others with their neurotic dread of missing things means they’re missing out on so much more. They’re missing out on the joy of spontaneity, the thrill of uncertainty and of going with the flow. In short, they’re missing out on life.
It’d be good to think that the early might change their ways, stop trying to exert such control and enjoy fuller, more relaxing lives. But I doubt they ever will. To re-quote the saddest words in the English language, it really is too late.
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