Have you ever tried to walk a trip between two places at half-pace? Or quarter-pace? It’s funny I find that most of us seem to have an extreme internal resistance to it. Peculiar what you see, what you notice when your
object in travelling is not just your destination. Roofs, birds, peoples’ eyes, litter, arguments, the sky, broken shoes…But it feels so wrong, when you could make it there in half the time.
Why does it feel like such an extreme travesty to sit still for an hour and do nothing? That is, not working, or talking, or watching television, or reading, or even meditating or praying, but nothing.>> A waste of time… << But what exactly is the purpose of time? I wonder if it can be
disentangled from the purpose of life. Because it seems that so often our idea of time being valuable is based on the premise that if life has a purpose then every second must also have a purpose. It is somewhat logical, in that if life can be said to have a purpose then surely it follows that the more that the smaller segments of a single life are fed directly and productively into that purpose then the more meaningful the single life becomes. But what if the purpose of life is not quantitatively measurable? If (for example) the purpose of life (assuming for the moment that life can be boiled down as easily as chicken stock) was to become more and more alive, at times the most ‘productive’ means of accomplishing this end might be to experience failure, or do nothing, or take twice as long over a task that could be done more quickly...
Or again, what if the word 'purpose' is not exactly equivalent with ‘product’, and therefore that (despite what a consumer-driven speed-focused culture might propel us into believing) the most purposeful life is not necessarily the most efficient one. Not the one where the most things get done, or books get read or projects get carried out. Indeed, if we shift our focus from tasks and ‘things’ that can be accomplished in life (one’s life, our lives) to relationships (with God, with one another) and meaningful friendships when thinking of purpose, efficiency might even be the biggest theft of meaningfulness.
I would like to become more easily interrupted.
