We have a similar expression in Danish.
In Danish It’s:
“Ledighed er roden til alt ondt”
When translated (using Google translate), it translates to this:
“Unemployment is the root of all evil”
I remember this expression (the Danish one) from when I was a kid. I always believed that it was coined to prevent slackers from not working. In Denmark we have a fairly well-functioning well-fair system – but in order for it to balance properly, you need to have more contributors than “takers” in the system. Of course, if you don’t work you normally don’t get paid (unless you receive public well fair), so to me it always seemed kind of redundant to have such an expression.
However, I’ve recently come to realize that the word “ledighed” has multiple translations/interpretations.
The word “ledig” in Danish can also be translated to “vacant” or “idle”.
Seeing the English expression “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” for the first time recently, I realized that the phrase that I often heard in my childhood maybe wasn’t always a jab at the unemployed – but rather the people who had a tendency towards having idle hands. You know, the lazy people – like me! 😛
That then led me to ponder about the periods of my life, where I felt like my head had been busy, but my hands had been idling. Of course such periods (still) comes and goes. For a while I actually managed to ruminate myself into a mild depression. There of course were other factors involved, but the main driver behind my depression was simply because I was spending too much time inside my own head. I saw a therapist for a few sessions, and what I basically learned from those sessions was:
“Stop thinking about it!”
Of course that it easier said than done. When you have a tendency to overthink in general (I’ve realized this about myself a long time ago), thinking too much about your own thoughts or wellbeing quickly turns into rumination, which is not a good thing.
My therapist also told me this:
“You can’t think yourself well, but you can think yourself ill”
This was also a big eyeopener for me. You can think yourself ill. So if that indeed was the case for me, then all I had to do to “fix myself” was to stop thinking about it!
So I did. Of course this is a lot easier said than done. Often it feels like the thoughts are involuntary, but there is only one person in the world who can control your thoughts; you.
According to a recent study, humans can have upwards of 10,000 thoughts per day. 10,000!? That’s crazy.
If you think long and hard about it, how many of the thoughts you had yesterday do you remember today? My bet is not a lot. In fact, I bet it’s only a few?
Our thoughts are nothing, until we choose to make them into something. New hair, new clothes, mowing the lawn, washing the car, cleaning the kitchen, making dinner, playing with our kids, writing a text, smiling at a stranger, investing in a stock.
If the studies are true, we get thousands of thoughts per day that yields no action at all. So you can say that somehow they are pointless. None the less, our thoughts contribute to our self image. And thus the more negative thoughts you have about yourself or your life, most likely you’re going to feel worse about yourself. This was exactly what had happened to me.
You are what you think
I don’t know who said that, but it sounds very wise. Kind of like “If you can dream it, you can do it”.
Now, if we couple this with our knowledge of the (ever) growing depression rate, I think we can conclude that in fact idle hands are the devils workshop. I’m not a religious man, so I do not believe in the concept of “the devil”, but here the devil is simply an expression for something bad; The devil is in the detail 😈
The concept of “idle hands” as I stated in the beginning of these ramblings, didn’t really dawn on me until recently. Think about it (pun intended). When is the time that you have the most time to conjure up new thoughts about yourself and your situation? When your hands are idle – meaning, when you’re not doing anything.
So, what is the solution? Well, not to have idle hands, right? But you can’t do something (meaningful) ALL the time?
Some people actually can, and they’re the kind of people who gets shit done, become entrepreneurs and business owners and make something of themselves.
I was raised to be lazy. I know that seems like I’m blaming my parents for my problems, but looking back at my childhood I now see the patterns that my parents instilled in me. They’ve always idolized vacationing and the lazy sofa time, and thus I grew up believing that the best place in the world to be, was on the couch. Of course I had other grown-up role models in the family (luckily), so I also saw a few examples of people keeping their hands busy (but most of them did it to earn for their next vacation – not to earn for their future).
I don’t want to have idle hands. But I want to spend my time doing something meaningful. That’s not always easy
However, I’ve recently gotten a new friend at work, whom I’ve grown really fond of. We talk about everything, and he’s from east Europe, so his perspective on life is vastly different from mine. He came to Denmark to live with his wife and kids, and he loves it here. I was born in Denmark, and as most native Danes I think we all kind of have a love-hate relationship to this country HAHA.
But seeing Denmark in the perspective of a non-native Dane, who truly loves the country has really helped me understand his point of view.
Given that we talk about everything, he recently told me that he knows the solution to all of my problems ( 😮 ).
It’s easy, he said: Sports.
When you do sports, you don’t think about your problems – you think about winning. And if you think about it (pun intended) there really is no downside to doing a sport. Any sport that gets your full attention for 1-2 hours and that you enjoy playing, is way better for you than any medication.
And this my friends, is the solution to all our problems.
Sports.