Introduction
I stood, transfixed, staring vacantly at nothing in particular. Someone I know died this week. Somehow, at 30, news of death still reverberates right to the heart of my fears. Confronted with the eternal quiet, this is almost always my reaction. We are all fated to die. It is one of life's existential truths. So why am I afraid of it?
As an agnostic, a coherent explanation for death is the one story I miss from Christianity. Nothingness is perhaps easier to understand through the metaphor of God, heaven and hell. The idea of heaven nursed me through the death of my aunt as a teenager. Devoid of this comprehensible off-the-shelf answer to "where has she gone?" I think I would still be grieving.
What a tragic irony it is that we are gifted life only to be constantly aware of death. Either this self-consciousness is an aberration, an anomaly in the universe's plans or some omniscient creator encoded death-anxiety as the eternal reminder to live.
If death is a reminder to live, this creates the ghastly arithmetic of time wasted, plus time well spent equals a life. When confronted with mortality, my consternation is not because I fear the pain of death. No, it is because it reminds me that I have attributed more of this equation to time wasted than I care to admit.
Productivity Is Time Wasted
Productivity in 2021 is like smoking in the 50's - cool and sexy but poisonous.
Society enjoins us to work harder, faster and for longer. This frantic grinding is one of the great unquestioned virtues of our age. Have we not realised the etymology of "productivity" is from land and labour economics? Measuring the quantity of physical and digital outputs is simply another means to distract us from death's glance.
Frankly, it pisses me off. From your perspective, dear reader, that may sound disingenuous. I am a self-professed workaholic, after all. Despite my habits, I am not a believer in the cult of productiveness. I despise the rhetoric around work and success and wish to one day be unmolested by the daily anxiety I feel when idle.
Being busy is now an apparent medal of honour. We seem to have forgotten that boredom serves a vital creative purpose as the wellspring of the imagination. Being productive is not an inevitable condition of life. We have chosen this, if only by our acquiescence to it.
Busy is a decision, and quite frankly, it bores me to hear about it. I share Søren Kierkegaard's assertion that "of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work." (1) Perhaps this is one of meditation's downsides? It makes you question the locus of your propulsion towards the busy trap. It reminds you that productivity, for its own sake, is time wasted.
"of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work."
This statement then begs the question of who will stand up and fight against this cult of productivity for time well spent? Who will organise the diminution of workaholism in favour of quality connections with our loved ones? I think we'd all be too afraid to take this mantle. We'd be thrown in the digital pillory and shamed for indolence.
Remember this: How we spend our days will amount to a life lived. What good are money and health if we forget how to use them? What good is an expensive birthday present for our child if they never form relationships with their absent parents? When someone dies, it always reminds me of the futility of the time I waste in chasing wealth.
Quality Outweighs Quantity
We toil and graft for more money or power when our most precious account, the hour-glass of life, is pilfered by every superfluous step towards an impressive bank balance we take.
In December 2020, I wrote a Socratic dialogue with myself, arguing against avarice as a primary driver in my life. I have written about this before, so it is no surprise that money and its many discontents are a constant fasciation source for me.
I wrote that two existential truths present themselves when I ponder the economics of a life:
- One requires money for its utility. It is a basic survival necessity.
- We are all fated to die, and ostensibly, one cannot bring their wealth to the grave.
Owing to this logic, I can argue that consistency and certainty of income should far outweigh the lure of quantity when deciding how to allocate your resources.
The dialogue then becomes a counterargument that "more money provides more freedom and possibility." To dispute this, I say, "I would point here to the notion of marginal utility and the law of diminishing returns. I believe I have surpassed the threshold where I have enough; therefore, I acknowledge that the security of my current standard of living is more important than improving this position."
"I believe I have surpassed the threshold where I have enough; therefore, I acknowledge that the security of my current standard of living is more important than improving this position."
In essence, because we are going to die, the pursuit of more money is futile. Once you reach a minimum acceptable standard of living, acquisitiveness is wasting time. This manner of thinking is anathema to the productivity champions I mentioned earlier.
Their problem, as I see it, is that they don't comprehend death as inescapable. They live as if they are never going to die. No one speaks to this misalignment of resources better than Seneca.
Life is long if you know how to use it
The brevity of life, I feel, is more about perspective and perception than about the actual time allotted to us. Nowhere is this better elucidated that in Seneca's short diatribe On The Shortness of Life (2). Seneca was a Roman Stoic Philosopher (C. 4 B.C.- A.D.65), essayist, celebrity and dramatist.
His prose beautifully captures the greatest paradox of our age: We have learned how to make a living, but not a life. We have a lot of baggage, but no time to fly. He writes, "In guarding their fortune, men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most extravagant."
"In guarding their fortune, men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most extravagant."
It seems that two thousand years of history hasn't taught us anything about how to live. We have replaced consulship or oratory fame with Masserattis and a place at the boardroom table. We wrestle with the brevity of time only through periodic reminders of death — tragic realisations that we waste time on trivialities.
Seneca writes that "It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile, they take no account of time that will never more return."
He adds that "new preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it."
I find this poignant because I read the words knowing that I will need another person to die before seeking out Seneca's essay again. I try to keep Memento Mori symbols in my office as I waste the most time in this room. The Latin expression Memento Mori means, "Remember, you are going to die."
I hope that someday I will remember. I am optimistic that when I finally become a father, my children will know just how much I want to balance the equation of life with time well spent in their company.
Life is long in the company of your loved ones.
Key Takeaways
- Death is a constant reminder that time is a reducing balance. It reminds us to live better with the limited time we have.
- Defining what wasted time and time well spent mean for you will determine a life well-lived.
- Productivity and busyness, for their own sake, is wasted time.
- Quality and consistency are more important than quantity. Defining what enough is for you will allow you to focus on the quality of life you wish to have.
- Life is long in the company of your loved ones.
