Terminable Time

Our human ability to project into the future far better than most critters is both a boon and a burden; the difficulty is that we know that someday we will die. Even though we seldom are inclined to acknowledge it, every one of us is conscious of this fact. Our time in this existence is restricted… one might even say very short. Compared to a tree, we’re here quickly and then gone. Compared to a mountain, we’re not even the blink of an eye.

Animals are less likely to suffer from the curse of knowing they have only so much time, so they happily and blissfully live in the moment, not worrying about it. We humans have certain advantages over our fellow creatures (say, sipping a nice cabernet wine) but our curse, the source of so much of our angst, is the foreknowledge that we will soon be gone. So there’s a deep understanding at the core of every human that time is precious, more so than gold, although this is seldom a conscious response.

Many of us try to use our limited time by obsessively filling every waking moment with furious activity. Modern technology allows us to accomplish a particular feat that required a dozen of our ancestors. So we multitask! A contemporary farmer on his own can tend to hundreds of acres with his machines, which enables him to plow while he texts! The business world esteems productivity and strives to drive efficiency ever higher—drawing evermore lifeblood out of employees.

Many of us understand that money and time are, in some ways, interchangeable. For example, I noted years ago that, having chosen to live a low-income lifestyle, I had to invest a lot more time in daily chores. Many people earn lots of money in order to be able to buy the time of others to do their mundane tasks, while they carve out time to ski or go sailing. Leisure time can be very pricey!

We thus are likely to adopt the belief that the more money we have, the more time we’ll have. That’s a false lure, however. Yes, there seems to be virtually no limit to the amount of money one may accumulate, but that’s where the addictive draw of material things comes in. When is enough, enough? Our insatiable desires can never be slaked. But if we pause and honestly look at ourselves, we can quickly see that, although time and money seem interchangeable, there is a limit to the amount of time we have. We may become a billionaire, but can’t become immortal.

Thus, many people ironically and paradoxically (even tragically) allow precious time to be wasted, even when they are fervently trying to hoard it. While their attention is diverted by making more money, their time slips away. Another irony of the human condition is that poor people often have more time than the rich—if only because they can devote more attention to it. More often than not, a poor person is more generous with her time than a wealthy one.

One of the salient paradoxes of the human condition is that, like love, we can enjoy our time so much more when we give it away. Both time and love are priceless, and yet when we freely mete them out to others, we discover that we can come to appreciate them more than we ever would if we try to hoard them. It’s not that we find others returning love or time to us in abundance (although this can happen); it’s that we really come to appreciate every moment and every gesture of love that we share. It’s a sacred contradiction: to get something truly precious, you must give it away.

Life is Delightful

To be alive is a precious gift. Whether we’re in human form or are an insect, every one of us inherently knows that being alive is special. Every creature will valiantly struggle to stay alive, whenever death threatens. Nature has placed a tremendously strong drive in every one of us to hold on to our life.

One reason we embrace life so dearly, I think, is its promise to bring us countless forms of delight. The taste of exquisite food, the sight of a sunset sky, the love of another person—these are rewards we experience, and experiences from which we take great joy. Watch a bird soar, a dog chase a ball, a bear dive into a stream full of fish—and know that animals have the same ability to experience delight.

Some folks might point to a gloomier side of life, however. Life is fragile, they would say. We constantly are but a heartbeat away from death. Circumstances beyond our control can snatch this existence from us at any moment. We face constant threats. An animal inherently knows that it can be eaten—that a predator may lurk around the next bend. These threats can dampen our joy of life and fill us with dread.

Additionally, we humans fear death in our own special way—burdened with the knowledge that our mortality may come calling the next minute. Disease and violence may rob us of this precious life, and there may be little we can do about it. As Carlo Strenger (a philosopher and psychoanalyst) puts it, “…we all need protection from the unbearable knowledge that we are mortal.”

Rather than let these dark thoughts intrude on our enjoyment of life, I believe we can allow them to heighten our sense of the preciousness of living. Life’s very fragility and shortness makes it all the more cherished. Gold and diamonds are valued by many people simply because they are rare and thus expensive. Isn’t it the same for life?

Another author I have learned much from—Bernd Heinrich, a biologist—describes how we all (humans and animals) do things out of an urge to survive, without any conscious understanding of why we do them. We act in so many ways to enhance our staying alive. Why do we do this—simply to hang on to this existence or to take delight in all that life brings us? Heinrich also ponders the drive to stay alive, not as an effort to become immortal, but just to taste those delights. He writes, “I try to imagine what it would be like if I had the assurance that I’d never die, and wonder if life would be so sweet.” It seems to me that immortality would probably be excruciatingly boring.