No Time to Spare

The first essay in Ursula Le Guin’s book, No Time to Spare, a collection of her blogs, is called “In Your Spare Time.” In it she describes a questionnaire she received from Harvard in 2010, prior to the sixtieth reunion of the graduating class of 1951. She was a graduate of Radcliffe, affiliated with Harvard but not yet officially a part of it because of gender issues.

It asked some interesting questions, among them:

1. If divorced, check the box for once, twice, three, four or more times. Are you: currently remarried, living with a partner, or none of the above. She asks, how is it possible to be divorced and still be none of the above? Well, it is technically possible, I think, but the point she makes is that it is doubtful such a question would have been asked on a reunion questionnaire in 1951. And she points out that we have “come a long way baby.”

2. Given your expectations, how have your grandchildren done in life? She finds that one hard to answer as she has a 4 year-old grandchild who she says is doing just fine. She does not have expectations for him but rather hopes and fears for his future related to the way she says the environment “has been screwed up by profiteering industrialism.”

3. Are you living your secret desires? “My desires are flagrant,” she responded. She failed to answer the question with a yes or no.

4.”In your spare time, (now that you are retired) what do you do?” Check all that apply (a list of 27 items followed) beginning with golf and followed by racquet sports, shopping, TV, bridge and creative activities such as painting, writing, photography.

I love her response to this one. LeGuin is a well-known sci fi writer, has a stellar reputation and has made a comfortable living at her work. She says, “I am not retired because I never had a job to retire from. My life work has been those creative activities, categorized by the questionnaire as hobbies.”

LeGuin asks, “When all the time you have is spare, that is free, what do you make of it? The opposite of spare time is occupied time and all her time is occupied, she says—by living. That includes sleeping, daydreaming, keeping in touch with friends and family on email, reading, writing poetry, embroidering, cooking, eating, cleaning up the kitchen, shopping for groceries, walking, travelling, watching a movie, exercising, snoozing with her cat in the afternoon—none of this is spare time, she says. “I can’t spare it.”

"What is Harvard thinking of," she asks? "I am going to be 81 next week. I have no time to spare."

By: Libby James