We save and plan for elaborate vacations. We anticipate for months and months. And when it inevitably isn’t as special or elaborate or photo- worthy as we’d hoped, we feel awful, like we’re not enough, like we haven’t done enough.
Yet the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who has three kids, questions the “quality time” that so many of us chase.
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.
Special days? Nah. Every day, every minute, can be special. All time with your kids—all time with anyone you love—is created equal. Eating cereal together can be wonderful. Blowing off school for a fun day together can be wonderful—but so can the twenty-minute drive in traffic to school. So can taking out the garbage or waiting in the McDonald’s drive-through.
Cherish the “garbage time.” It’s the best kind of time there is.