February 21, 2022

Bowling

One of the smartest and most affecting books I’ve read this year is Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks, which I’ve been thinking about all the time in the weeks since I’ve read it, how we think of time, and how we use it, and how we even imagine that time is something to be used. It’s a book that’s come around for me in a quieter season, when I’ve been stepping back from the hustle and taking time to recover after a rough couple of months. When I’ve been trying to come to terms with my own relationship to production and productivity, which is not quite the same as the cliched Instagram memes about the importance of rest and self-care, but is worth interrogating all the same.

Yesterday I went bowling. It’s the Family Day long weekend here in Ontario, and we went to visit my parents yesterday, going on a snowy winter walk with my dad in the early afternoon. Later on, we met my mom at the bowling alley, which is just the best place ever with its retro vibes and how instead of a refurbishment, they just decided to install black lights.

None of us knows how how to bowl, really, and even if we did, it’s five pin bowling, which I don’t think actually counts. My mom had asked for our lane not to have bumpers, but for some reason we ended up with them anyway, which was possibly for the best and meant the children had more fun…and not just the children. I hadn’t a clue how scoring works, and can’t believe that once upon a time you had to figure it out yourself on a scorecard with the air of a tiny pencil, but thankfully none of us were tasked with such a thing, because these days a computer does all the work, the numbers it was generating seeming altogether random. But no matter, because we were there to have fun, not for competition, which brings me back to our original point: none us actually knows how to bowl.

So there we were, hurling a small ball down the aisle, illuminated by black light while loud music played and the only thing you could hear over it were the cheers of the bowlers whenever anybody knocked down a pin, or got a strike, or (in the case of our group) when we failed to do either.

I actually managed to get a strike a few times, but bowling arm becoming more confident and effective as the time went by, and I was a little impressed with myself, but not entirely.

Instead, what I was thinking, was what a joy it was to while my time like this, playing a game with people I loved whose rules were seemingly arbitrary, bumpers making failing altogether impossible, the inconsequentiality of all of it so essential to the experience. As close as you can get to doing nothing while doing something. There was not a single stake except togetherness, and having fun, and it was so easy to be present, and then eventually, after an hour or so, we’d all had enough, so we took off our rental shoes and went home.