Thursday, May 17, 2018

The Meaning(lessness) of Life

A paradox to consider: we speak of time as being a precious commodity, but also as a nuisance.   We find that we have too much time on our hands, but in other instances we feel that we have too little.   Is this merely a an academic meandering, or are there practical implications to this duality in our perception of time as a commodity?

Perhaps the most undesirable time are the scraps of time that are spent waiting for something else to happen: you arrive at the doctor’s office on time for an appointment, but the doctor is running “a few minutes” late, so you are relegated to the waiting room.   Ten minutes pass, then twenty, then half an hour, then longer – and your irritation grows with each passing moment.  Most often, this delay is inconsequential – there is nothing else on your schedule and you had no better use for the time.  It’s simply the sense of being trapped for an interminable amount of time that creates irritation.

But even when the time is know, it is a nuisance.  Let’s say that you don’t arrive on time, but instead fifteen minutes early, and the appointment takes place at the proper time.   What do you do with those fifteen precious moments of your life?   Fiddle with your phone, pick up a magazine and read an article you’re not interested in, or make small-talk with your fellow temporal prisoners?   

Nothing that you do during this time is particularly meaningful or pleasant.   You usually don’t have the equipment to do something worthwhile, there isn’t time to leave and come back, there are few tasks that fifteen minutes is sufficient to complete or even make meaningful progress, and you often cannot give your full attention to something for the risk of missing your turn.

Daily life is riddled with these scraps of time – when you are ready but it is not yet time to go, when you have arrived and it is not yet time to start the activity you came for.  Our “standard” daily routine is arranged to minimize scraps of time, but any activity outside the usual is often accompanied by these “not yet” moments of waiting.   Think about a day when you must travel by airplane and check into a hotel for a meeting the next day – practically the entire day is spent waiting on something to happen.

There is also the time we spend in activities that are not meaningful in themselves, but are done in preparation for more meaningful things.   Take the travel example, the entire day is spend in activities that are not meaningful except as a means to do something else – the meeting that will happen the next day.   Or consider college education, which is four years of activity that is merely in preparation for getting a job in which you will do meaningful things.

And even on the job, are the things you do every day really that meaningful?   They are routine duties, done to earn a paycheck.   Does balancing the ledgers or counting the stock have a meaningful impact on the life of the worker?   Aside of receiving his wage, is there any motivation to do these things, or to do them well?

And even for meaningful work, is it meaningful to the worker?   Let’s say you are the doctor that others come to see, or a surgeon who daily performs life-saving procedures.   Aside of the salary you receive, is this meaningful work?   It is certainly meaningful to the patient – but is it meaningful for you?

It was not my intention here to go on a nihilistic rant, though it seems to be headed in that direction.   All of life is not meaningless, and there are in fact meaningful moments where the things that we do have an impact on our lives in some significant way.   But most of life is spent on those moments in-between – when we are waiting for something to happening, preparing to do something, or doing something that is valuable to someone other than ourselves.

None of these moments in time are meaningful, and as such most of them are entirely undesirable.  We may take some satisfaction in the good we do for others, and we may even take satisfaction in finding some way to pass the time – but the moments in life that are precious to us, those for which we seem to have not enough time, tend to be few.

As a general principle, paradoxes do not exist.   When you seem to have encountered one, you must check your premises.   And the flaw in the premise of the paradoxical value of time is that it is a commodity – that one second is the same as the next.   And in this regard, time is not a commodity: some moments matter, some don’t.  In all, I’m led to the conclusion that most simply don’t.

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