Permission to Dilly-dally

On reclaiming pockets of time for joy

A few days ago I posted this Note on Substack about dilly-dallying and it seems to have resonated with many of you:

It got me thinking about the art of dilly-dallying. Of lollygagging. Of relishing a good dawdle or meandering contentedly.

My son is a dilly-dallying expert.

Having a shower takes an age because he’s busy looking for the shapes of animals in the stones inlaid in the wall. While putting on a pair of socks he needs to stop three times to tell me stories about his imaginary pet bats. And eating his toast takes 3-5 working days because he’s reading a book catalogue and drawing a dragon at the same time.

When my son was little I read lots of books about the importance of nature in childhood and I took them very much to heart. His dad and I have done everything we could to foster a connection in him with the natural world; we attended bush playgroup and Waldorf kindergarten, we had a nature table and did regular nature walks, we spent hours in our veggie garden and we read dozens upon dozens of nature books with him. And joyfully, it worked! We now have a beautiful nine-year-old who will happily spend 2 hours just looking for bugs, playing swords with sticks and collecting feathers in the bush near our house. This is undoubtedly a beautiful thing, but what no one tells you about raising a small person who finds wonder in all the natural world, it that it is very hard to get anywhere quickly. Every mushroom must be examined. Every creepy crawly must be researched. Every shiny rock must be collected.

This has been a exceptional lesson for me in the value of dilly-dallying.

Sometimes I catch myself rushing him, and while at times we really do have to get a wriggle on in order to not to be late for school or miss a swimming lesson, often I realise, I’m actually not sure what the rush is for. Sure, we have to get home so I can get dinner on. But would eating 10 minutes later because we stopped to watch a chain of ants gathering biscuit crumbs really be the end of the world? Will everything fall apart if I send that email half an hour later because we stopped to gather helicopter seeds? More often than not, the answer is no.

The modern world is so centred around productivity and achievement, the notion of taking one’s time to dilly-dally is almost a radical act of rebellion, but that shouldn’t be the case. We were not designed to tick off lists and reach quotas all day long. We need time to rest, to play and to soak in all the magic around us.

And so I take a breath. I watch my boy dilly-dally. I shush the part of my brain our culture has wired to believe we must be productive and efficient at all times, and I remind myself it would do me good to take a page out his book and dilly-dally more often.

I give myself extra time to meander through the store, smelling expensive candles I have no intention of buying. I snuggle under a blanket to sip my morning coffee slowly, rather than gulping it down absentmindedly between loads of laundry. I pause while watering the veggie garden to savour watching the sun dip low in the sky and to drink in the smell of orange blossoms.

I give myself permission to dilly-dally.

And you should too.

Your inner child will thank you for it.

Katie xx