On Being and Time

Time. How to spend it?  We always wish we had more of it. Where did it go?

I read a quote the other day that said when you give your time to someone that is the most precious gift you can give, because it is time you will never get back.

-----------------------------------

Working to Live

We live in a society where working and making money are the chief proprietors of our time. We spend our lives saving for a Future that rests on the emotional blood loss of Today. Years and years we wait to live; dream of vacationing here, plan on retiring there. Storing up money and trinkets like little squirrels, who starve themselves now to have a questionable enjoyment later. As Thoreau sees it, “By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed…laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break into and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end.”

But we work and work, getting into debt over frivolous purchases, “Always promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day…making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day.”

Like the mouse on a perpetually turning wheel, we chase after a cheese that, no matter our diligent efforts, we will never grasp. Thoreau uses the analogy of a hunter: “With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it.”

Old age will happen. It will make philosophers of us, no question. But why can’t we be philosophers before that time? Must we postpone life until age 70? Does it take a lifetime of savings just to take a break? In Walden, we hear Thoreau feeling sorry for the people who  have come to read his words only to feel like they are spending “borrowed or stolen time, robbing [their] creditors of an hour”. As if Truth were relegated so low compared to the Almighty Dollar.  Are we so at the mercy of our bosses and employers that we feel more bound to give them our time than ourselves?

Time Off

We are made to feel guilty for taking time off. Vacation days? Not if you want to climb the corporate ladder or be seen as a reliable worker.  And if you do take your vacation days, do you really make the most of them?

 “Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day… He cannot afford it." -Thoreau

Certainly we all can’t be on perpetual vacation. How would society function? But how did we get to thinking that it takes working our whole lives just to relax?  You don’t have to go on Wheel of fortune or win the lottery. These day-time and evening game shows irrationally propagate the notion that a vacation requires spending $6,000 at some exotic beach locale. It doesn’t!

Someone suggested to Thoreau if he just laid up some money, he could travel to Fitchburg by train and see the country. Sounds fine as far as it goes, but our resident philosopher recognized that if he started on foot that very day he would beat the man who had to work that day to earn the fare to get there. So, as he says, “Instead of going to Fitchburg you will be working here the greater part of the day.”  And later says by the time these people have scrimped and saved in order to travel, “they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel.”

Later in Walden, we hear of a man who, wanting to be a poet, went to India to make a fortune just so he could come back to pursue his poetry. Thoreau is as direct and as incisive as usual: “He should have gone up [to the] garret at once.”

--------------------------

“Ordinary people think merely how they shall spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it.” – Schopenhauer

What are we afraid of? I think we do not know how to adequately use the time we are given. When we are granted a half day off, or a random Monday holiday presents itself, we have this sudden urge to do “something”. But what? Some go shopping.  Many go home and turn on their TV/computer. At the end of a life, is that what you will be proud you did all those afternoons and evenings?

I am reminded when I go out for such trivial amusements, “the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.”

On Living Authentically

Hopefully by now we see the deadened cycle we willingly participate in. So how can we get out of it? As simple and difficult as it is, we must rigorously live from a place of authenticity and self knowledge.

“We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs…” – Epicurus

In The Age of Reason by Sartre, the protagonist Mathieu struggles with his desire for freedom. Freedom from what was, what is, what is imposed on him. “I will be free”, he utters to the wind. But to remember this bet, this proclamation to himself and the world, he has to be alert. However, like so many of us, “he could do no more than submit to the ancient and monotonous sensation of the daily round”. 

He questions whether he is nothing more than an official, than his working title. “Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he waited.”  He has real dreams to travel and start afresh, “He thought of going to Russia, of dropping his studies, of learning a manual trade . But what had restrained him each time on the brink of such a violent break, was that he no reasons for acting thus. Without reasons, such acts would be mere impulses. And so he continued to wait…”

The problem in this waiting for clear, logical reasoning for travel or career changes is that the guideposts are seldom very logical. There is often little sense behind our strongest desires and decisions, and yet they are often the most intuitively guided. You have to be a little bit of a rebel.
----------------------------

The point is how best to use what time you have left. Hopefully you choose to do something out of love versus fear. Purely living a monotonous worker bee life for the sake of some uncertain future is not something I would wish on anyone. We are not at the mercy of business or the cult of busyness, we have a say what work (or leisure) we shall be in engaged in. And the busybodies who probe and question you should not be part of the equation.

As Thoreau adroitly posits, “There is no glory so bright but the veil of business can hide it effectually. With most men life is postponed to some trivial business, and so therefore is heaven. Men think foolishly that they may abuse and misspend life as they please and when they get to heaven turn over a new leaf.”

What would you be doing with your life if no one was telling you how to live? Your life will pass, and the clock will count down to zero. I hope you will have put it to good use.