Little Time

A thought came to me recently—literally as a statement that popped into my head: “Because I have a little time, I have little time.” Now, I realize that sentence can be considered to be baffling, trite, or even obvious; or it may just be paradoxical. Trying to parse it out a little bit, I played with it for a while, to see if it really meant anything to me, or to reject it as just another vapid thought.

As I rolled it around the skull, an interesting interpretation of this enigmatic phrase came to mind. I have been blessed for about three decades now to live in a situation that has allowed me to take the time to put attention to most things that I encounter in my daily life. Long ago I left the fast lane—a big city career—for a slower pace out here in the woods. The move gave me the luxury of being able to devote time to things that come along, things which appear to be meaningful to me, or just interesting. Thus I have been given a little time (the most precious gift we have) to devote to things I encounter in life. I do not have to rush on by—unable to pause and pay attention to them.

The benefits that this has brought into my life are sundry. I have been able to open up to many more fascinating experiences than I otherwise could have. I've been able to explore, to delve into things that would have, in other circumstances, passed me by, unnoticed. Countless times I have found myself at some task, for example, such as sawing wood for next winter, when I notice an unusual activity unfolding nearby. Maybe a bird just did something puzzling. Knowing that I can cut this wood tomorrow as timely as today, I can lay the saw down and allot some time to watching the bird. I can observe and learn. I can even go inside on the spot and do a little research in one of my bird books or troll the internet.

What I often find happening is that I'm quickly consumed with several simultaneous research topics: I've come upon yet another book to read: an idea has popped up about how better to modify the bird feeder; an internet article has led me on a multi-faceted exploration of the nature of my gut biome; a neighbor calls with a question about something he saw in last night's sky, and it sends me off seeking an answer; I go outdoors to check the oil in the car and end up getting sidetracked with four other homestead duties or attractions. And on it goes.

The result? My life becomes so full of immediate and fascinating activities that I no longer have time for social chatter, popular entertainment, forwarding cute emails, or arguing politics. I even try to elude most phone calls.

So I find myself in the odd situation where I have little time for these passing social activities, mostly because I have the leisure time to expend on those things I've come to value far more: the natural world surrounding me and the countless contingencies that I constantly encounter.

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.