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April 2021

Post image for The Ancient Art of Using Time Well

I don’t remember anything about the 188-minute film Magnolia except one line. A dying man bitterly expressing his regrets says to his nurse, “Life ain’t short, it’s long. It’s long goddammit!”

I remember simultaneously hoping that this unusual opinion was true, and realizing that I didn’t want to spend any more of my life watching this particular movie. I’d like to believe I stopped watching right then to plant a tree or call my mother, but I know I didn’t.

However much time life is prepared to offer, not wasting any more of it has been at the top of my mind recently. I just turned 40, or it feels like I just did – I’m already closer to 41. I also recently discovered the source of my lifelong difficulty in getting everyday things done, which I am now learning to work with. Thirdly, there’s the purpose-clarifying effect of the pandemic. Aside from its direct threat to our lives, the virus has suppressed and delayed “living” as we know it for a full year and counting.

Given these developments I can’t think of a better use of my time than learning to make increasingly better use of my time. If there were some kind of religion devoted to making the best use of one’s precious time on this earth, I would convert immediately.

There sort of is, and I sort of am. My periodic infatuation with the ancient Stoics has become more like a persistent shoulder-tapping. Their emphasis on living each moment purposefully makes too much sense to ignore, given my temperament and particular bag of issues. Wherever I go, online and off, aphorisms spoken by bearded marble busts keep appearing to me, like Scrooge with his Christmas ghosts.

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