How is your relationship with time? It might sound like a strange question, but it's essential. The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them, and their value will never be known. Improve them, and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
Do you have any spare moments to guard? If so, what are the obstacles to protecting these precious moments?
A previous episode discussed Seneca’s letter On Saving Time. Seneca advised,
Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which until lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.
Our time is the one thing that is really ours, and it is never too early to start guarding it. Guarding our spare moments and having the patience to let life unfold have much to do with our relationship to time. According to Dogen, a thirteenth-century Zen Master, “Beings, things, and events do not exist in time: being, things, and events are times.”
Similarly, the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal stressed,
“So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; … we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists.”
Several philosophers and spiritual thinkers have suggested we see ourselves as being time (or inextricably linked). Mindfulness is often described as relearning how to live in the here and now. It encourages us to direct our attention fully and nonjudgmentally to whatever task we are actually doing.
In Emerson’s Collected Poems, he wrote, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich, who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. With its hopes and invitations, this new day is too dear to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
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Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
How to Guard Your Spare Moments - Like Emerson