So I am sitting on the deck of my beautiful house, mine for a whole month, sipping home made smoothies and watching the sun on the water. There is a book in my hand, the smell of sun tan lotion and salt in the air and my brown faced, tousle haired husband sitting with his hand just brushing my arm in a wooden chair next to me. I can hear fishing boats chugging, birds calling and the sound of the waves beneath the deck. Above me, a fan turns, busily wafting cool air across the deck and at my feet a small gecko scuttles, shyly across the wood to hide in the flower pot. In a while, we might nip out for an ice cream.
And I'm still not happy.
Actually not happy is not quite accurate, it's more a case of the fidgets. I shift around in my chair, can't concentrate on my book and keep finding things to bustle off and do. None of such things actually need doing. I just can't quite relax when everything is so...well...relaxed.
"The pace of life is just slower here," says M, wisely, when I describe this ungrateful sense of ennui, "the fishermen are off out early but they sleep off the mid day heat in hammocks. No one rushes anywhere."
People are not lazy - on the contrary, the speed at which the beautiful wooden house being built a few doors down from us is shooting up, would put any British builder to shame. But it's true that no one really rushes. Life is slow, fishing is an art which requires patience, as is the crafting of small ornaments which a lady sells in one of the souvenir shops in town, and even the restaurants serve the tourists in short bursts over lunchtime and the locals over dinner, and have to wait around for the rest of the time.
"To really understand and live in this village," continues M, "maybe you have to slow down too. Embrace it."
He is right, of course. And we will probably feel rather more as though we are gaining an understanding of the Old Town lifestyle further into our stay, when we have had more chances to interact with the locals and gain a grip on village life.
So why do I find it so hard to live slow?
Am I simply too used, in my developed (potentially even over developed) country, to rushing around, squeezing long hours into short days and generally living fast?
Or does it boil down, essentially, to the thing I am doing, rather than the speed with which I approach it? Does the problem originate in the reading of a book on the deck, as opposed to working hard, sweating and pushing towards some achievement? The writing, for example, of my novel?
I think at the heart of it is just that. I feel the need to do some work. Work in the original physics definition of the word - to put effort into something - and thereby to achieve. The effort, in physics and in life, being often the achievement in itself - at least in the short term.
So why do I need to work? Is it some old fashioned sense of religious ethics - some protestant style belief in the inherent goodness of hard work? Is it my ticket to heaven?
Or is it pure self satisfaction? Is the work itself, either the planning to do it, the doing it, the finishing of it or all three, simply enjoyable in and of itself?
I rather suspect, and have always rather suspected, the latter.
We have been invited to B's house for drinks, and the lady who is renting us the house, S, newly back from three months away, joins us. B has moved only recently to Lanta Old Town, with her Thai boyfriend. S has lived there for fourteen years, running a tour and rental business for tourists. S is already booking snorkelling tours, she has us booked in for Friday. B is learning Thai. She goes to college every day from 9am until 3pm and asks for extra homework.
As a result of this, B can stay up late with us, after S goes hone to sleep away her jet lag, drink gin and tonics followed by beer and chat with us well into the evening in the outside deck of her beautiful house in a cleverly hung net right over the sea. And does she enjoy her drinks and her net all the more because she has worked hard in the day. I suspect so. She can lie in her net under the stars, imbibing gin with impunity.
As for me, something in me perks up as we chat and socialise, reflecting something which I rather knew already, that I need people to connect to places. I need to anchor us into a country or a village by reaching out and touching a person. Or two. Neither B nor S are Thai, so my wish to get to know one of my Thai neighbours remains unfilled, but we will get there. In the meantime S in particular has lived here so long she is fluent in Thai and accepted and assimilated into the Thai community. She tells us snippets of priceless information about the way of life here and the Thai culture and customs. Several times she uses the word 'we' rather than 'they' when explaining, for example, a particular Thai tradition. Also, frankly, both B and S are good fun, interesting and friendly people and I have a genuine and instinctive liking for them - which I like to hope might perhaps be reciprocated.
By the end of the evening my initial restlessness has been replaced with something rather more thoughtful. I have played out my extra energy in enthusiastic conversation, have a little store of fascinating insights into Thai culture, which I will share with you in a blog entry soon. I promise. But for now there is still this knotty problem of work.
People talk a lot about finding a balance. And they are quite right. What I am doing here is exactly that - trying to find a balance because something feels wrong about doing nothing. I have a novel to write and blog entries to take care of (including going back over past entries to correct the appalling spelling). So there is plenty to do. In this vast expanse of time when I stare into the sunsets on the days we are not out and about exploring I need to draw together some kind of order. A schedule or a set of things I must achieve that day. Or simply a minimum number of chapters to write. And then I will be happy. There is genuinely something compelling about work.
Of course that, when people talk about finding a balance, is not quite what they are getting at. The phrase, in fact, is 'work/life balance'. The implication? Work is not part of life.
People see work as an evil which encroaches on their life, stealing previous hours from it day by day. This is perhaps because we don't generally have any choice but to do it. We must work to earn money. What we do for work, or more importantly, what someone else is prepared to pay us to do may not be something we would choose to do otherwise.
But supposing we didn't have to work to earn money? My suspicion is that, to be truly happy, we would still need to do something. It may not be what we are currently paid for. But I would expect most people to sink gradually into a routine in which something, be it a hobby or be it a business, was the principle achievement for us each day.
Work is not necessarily your day job. It could be a run, a craft hobby, looking after children, walking the dog. It is anything which, somehow, achieves something, which, being done, changes something from its original state.
And if you do have to do the day job? Moving out of our fantasy world of leisure for a moment, I would suggest that unless said day job truly makes you utterly miserable (in which case, if it's possible, the best thing is to change it) you may as well enjoy it. At the end of the day, if you threw yourself into it, you're probably going to feel better than if you just plodded through. Your work becomes once again part of your life because you feel virtuous for achieving - and those stolen hours are therefore not so stolen. It's not just the employer that gets something out of it. And I'm not talking about money.
Solomon, who was supposedly one if the wisest thinkers in biblical times, write a book called Ecclesiastes. The main tenet, the phrase he goes back to again and again is 'meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless'. The sun rises, he notes, and then sets. Then it rushes back to where it rises. When a man dies he is forgotten. All his treasures and achievements become nothing. He returns to the ground. Everything we do is therefore pointless.
Don't sink too deep into depression reading this though. He goes on to say that, given this situation, the best thing a man can do is eat drink and be merry. I rather like Ecclesiastes! More to the point though, he also concludes that 'it us good for a man to toil'. Not because anything will come of his toil - we have already established it us meaningless - but because it us good for us. It makes us happier.
We have all had that feeling. Returning home after exercise, downing tools after a days work, leaving the office with an, if not empty, at least under control, email inbox. It feels good to have a tired body or a tired mind. It's satisfying. And does that evening meal, that film, that glass of wine feel all the more enjoyable for it? I think it does. Certainly the wine will go to your head quicker.
If talk of work as something negative to be escaped from us unhelpful, there is also obviously a need to ensure it isn't out if proportion. The motto 'work hard, play hard' has come to be associated primarily with partying all hours and then sealing a million pound deal the next morning with a hangover. But actually the maxim works whatever your 'play' is. You should give as much importance to stroking your cat in your slippers or phoning your mum as you do to your work.
Do your work. Drink your wine. Be happy.
That's that blog entry published, job done. Work day over.
I'll see you later. I have an appointment with a bottle of beer and a cat.
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