On Idleness

Was there ever a sin more disgusting to the English than idleness?
I loathe myself more in my idle moments than when I am angry or envious or generally self-obsessed, stressed, exhausted. It is when I am free to do nothing that I really can't forgive myself. When people ask me 'how are you', I never say 'I am not busy'. I wouldn't dare to say, 'I am very relaxed', who ever says: 'I have plenty of time on my hands', 'I'm taking it easy as usual' or 'I never do any work and my job isn't stressful at all?' Who would say 'I am getting plenty of sleep, I'm not overtired, I work part-time and I don't have children so all my free time is my own?' Only a person who didn't care about people's good opinion or was unafraid of their jealousy.
At this point in my life, all of these statements are true about the amount of time and freedom I currently have. I don't normally admit it. I feel ashamed of it. I could justify this with the fact that I have been recently bereaved, and that it hasn't always been like this. Today I don't want to. I don't want to excuse it or explain it away as good fortune. Many of these things have been my choice. If I were living in a country or an area, or came from a background where overtime was survival and hardship normal this wouldn't have been a choice. Maybe this is where my guilt is coming from.
I don't have 10 mouths to feed and a family dying one by one from aids in a country where there is no water or food and warfare is all we know. I don't have to walk for miles for a tap with clean water. I don't know tiredness or hunger. I can't help wondering if there is something criminal about the way I live my life.
Many of the people I know and love don't live frantic lives, some of them do, I used to live a very chaotic and frantic pace of life, but recently decided not to, felt unable to, thought it was no longer what I needed or wanted. But now I only seem to hear the voices of the ones that live at extraordinary extremes of life, those who can never say their lives are comfortably paced and easily balanced between activity and play. People who never have moments entirely to themselves, people with masses of relatives who need money sent to them so that they don't die. People who work all day and all night with no time to spend with family or friends. People who are so stressed they are like balls of fire when they walk past me obsessing about where they will find their next spare minute. All doing such important things, so inspiring and purposeful, people changing the world with their activity and sacrifice, bringing children up with which to usher in a new civilisation. I always read that 'raising children is the most important job in the world' and I've never questioned it, just assumed that I wasn't doing the most important job in the world.
I wonder what I bring to the world with all my inactivity and solitude, my quiet moments, my spare time for writing blogs no one will ever read. I wonder what purpose I fulfil. It is a constant struggle to remind myself that I am created to just 'be' because it seems that 'just being' is a very idle kind of self-indulgence when so many people are 'giving something back to society', being busy planning and fighting and rushing and never having time to sit and be or chat about the weather.
I think God has given me an odd path to tread. Contemplation and being is very unfashionable. We don't all stay in places where we can 'be' and 'contemplate' but when we reach them I wonder why we can't just luxuriate in them, soak them up, revel in it. I may be the only person that feels this overwhelming guilt that I love my life as it is and don't have much to complain about. I doubt it.
It is more likely that we have a collective guilt about the fact that much of what we do is not necessary in the sense that trecking across deserts barefoot is a neccessity of survival for many. Strictly speaking we don't need to rush about looking important, but we mostly at some time in our lives do so. I certainly have done so, and almost certainly will do so again. I may even believe for some time that I am important and rushing for a reason, but it won't really be 'true'. What is undoubtedly true is that I assume that mostly when we are not busy we feel judged, otherwise we wouldn't all be rushing about saying 'I'm so terribly busy' all the time. What is also undoubtedly true is my assumption could be completely wrong and it is only me that feels judged and judges myself the most harshly. Mostly I don't hear people saying 'I'm not busy at all, I have hardly anything to do of great importance, I'm just enjoying my freedom'. Mostly I hear people saying 'I'm afraid I just don't have time, I don't know where the time goes'. I know I don't shout about my leisure times, I keep them as a guilty secret, at least I did...until now!