‘Quality Time’ is not real
It’s something we want more of. We throw out that line “I want to spend more quality time with…” “I want to spend more quality time doing…” like we don’t get enough of it. “My love language is quality time.
It’s a phrase of good intentions, we all want to be doing meaningful things, to not miss out and let time slip past. But there is a misunderstanding with this. We want everything to be perfect, pretty and fall into place easily. We want everything to be magical like the movies. The perfectionist inside us wants everything to be “right.”
But the best version of ourselves sometimes can’t live up to these expectations we’ve created in our head and we’re left feeling disappointed and depressed.
And then we overdo it. We go way too out of the way in search of this ‘quality time’, spending too much on holidays, gifts, and dinners and putting too much pressure on ourselves.
We think “Oh if I do this this and this, then I (and they) will be happy.” This is false and actually very harmful.
Why do things have to be special to be quality time, why do things have to be extravagant, a high cost and seen as luxurious to be felt as ‘quality’?
What happened to the mundane and the ordinary? The simple. Have we forgotten that not everything has to be out of the world to be quality? Jerry Seinfeld loves the ordinary!
“I’m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ‘quality time’ — I always find that a little sad when they say, ‘We have quality time.’ I don’t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That’s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o’clock at night when they’re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that’s what I love.”
Jerry Seinfeld has three kids sums it up well. “Quality time” is nonsense.
Quality time, special time, quiet time, private time. No. It’s all quality, it’s all special, it all should be cherished.
Time is time time. All time is special. It’s created equal. It’s up to us to make it the highest quality. Every day is special and we should take advantage of that. We shouldn’t be here to just cherry-pick what are the good bits and the bad. It’s all good, it’s all quality.
You don’t have to go to a Michelin-star restaurant or go skiing in the Swiss Alps to have quality time with your partner. Maybe all they want is a nice home-cooked meal and a conversation on the couch or a weekend AirBnB getaway down the coast.
When you stop searching for the quality time you’ve oh so been looking for and realise it’s all quality. That it’s right in front of you.
You end up getting the time you always wanted. The time right in front of you.
The moment. The present. That, to me, is quality.
Until next time.
Brody.
