Curious

This week I began a new training regimen: I stopped watching the stopwatch. In fact, I’ve probably slowed my running pace by at least 25%. The change has been so euphoric (and counter-intuitively productive) that I’ve pondered recalculating the pace of the other 23 1/2 hours of my day.

Time not only reminds us of our humanity, but also betrays it on occasion. Time serves as a threat and a promise. Redeem it well; it’s a promise. Squander it, and it’s a curse. Time itself is amoral, but we allow the way in which we choose to redeem time to infuse our life with meaning.

As it so happens, I live in the bastion of industrialized, western culture: America. In America, time is money. Time seems excessively linear. You’re going forward or you’re going backwards. Use it or lose it. To do it faster is to do it better. Streamlining your life allows you to have more, be more, see more. Our concept of redeeming time is inherently wrapped up in cultural ideals.

One of the most telling mirrors of any culture is its language. So let’s examine what it means in 2000-something America to be “slow.” Morally, we associate it with idleness or laziness. Socially, we associate it with provincialism, backwardness. Intellectually? Stupidity. Idiocy. In contrast, think about the ideas you associate with the word “speed,” “fast,” or “fast-paced.” Efficiency. Effort. Power. Progress. Successful. Smart. Sharp. A step ahead. In fact, the most negative association I can drum up at the moment is “grueling,” a particularly ambivalent idea in light of the puritan work ethic.

Yet it remains popular to recognize that before “Just Do It,” “There [Was] No Finish Line.” Many scholars (i.e., Whorf) argue that time hasn’t always entailed the linear. In fact, literature often frames time as a more cyclical concept, one which is popularly associated with more traditional cultures. There is a comforting lens of nostalgia with which a beleaguered mind will often gaze on past cultures. But I think pointing backwards to another time or culture is, at best, a misinformed, albeit well-intentioned, attempt to battle the cultural presuppositions that pressure so many people to hasten already hurried lives.

With good reason, many scholars strongly disagree with those scholars that give into this notion. Barnes, critical of these dichotomizations of traditional and modern worldviews, feels that this conclusion is little more than “an amusing but ultimately sterile ballet of symbols.” So I pause here to acknowledge: just as industrialized Western time is not fully linear, traditional conceptions of time are not thoroughly cyclical. I’m not advocating a return to “simpler” or “happier” conceptions of time. (For the record, neither am I suggesting that the “cyclical” and “linear” are moral dichotomies.)

I’d be foolish to claim that old Nike slogan as a relic of another era. (Just the same, I do think “There Is No Finish Line” promotes a saner philosophy than that of “Just Do It.”) But, like many others, I sheepishly catch myself finding unhealthy comfort in an escape to the purely “cyclical,” a Never-land-of-sorts where life isn’t something you do at all. I envy the ability to live unfettered to the slavish notion that time is better spent because you spent it doing more or doing everything faster, because redeeming one’s time requires so many counter-intuitive choices.

All this talk of time well-spent reminds me of the biblical account of Lazarus’s two sisters, Martha and Mary. In the account, Jesus Christ comes to visit the sisters’ house. Martha, desiring to put him and his companions at ease, spends the visit hurrying around in order to meet the physical needs of her guests. Instead of joining Martha in the preparations, Mary spends the visit at Jesus feet, engaging in spiritual kinship through conversation. When Martha expresses her frustration with Mary to Jesus, he rebukes her for neglecting the more “needful” thing with which Mary chose to redeem her time. “Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her,” he reminds Martha.

Without being guilty of nostalgia, I think one can say that “a full life” is not simply a quantitative idea but also a qualitative one. As it is, life is like a vapor. It’s gone almost as soon as it begins. Ironically, what makes it valuable is not how little or how much we accomplish, but whether we accomplish the needful thing, in itself an extensive topic. I’m suspicious that our concept of “well-spent” time is irreparably molded to our cultural expectations. Ultimately, whether one is content or dissatisfied with the tempo of their life, our susceptibility to cultural norms should cause everyone pause (no pun intended). How do we measure time well-spent? What informs that perception? Do my choices connect to that needful thing?

I know this isn’t the post you’ve come to expect, but my cultural research pollutes everything these days. My sense of irony shudders at the sentimentality and seriousness in this post. I know it’s not quite up to snuff. But maybe its personal nature will make up for the rest of the literary drivel. As my wise friend S. pointed out: if you live by your successes, you die by your failures.