Brain Food #572
Time is our friend if we make it so
Thoughts of the day
Our time is the most valuable asset we have. Unknowingly, sometimes carelessly, we invest it every minute. And so, when it falls within our powers, we should choose how to spend it well. Seneca famously said:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
Of course, serendipitous moments may change everything in a second.
And while we often also spend our time worrying about things that time may bring, though many of these events may never occur, we might be ‘blindsided on some idle Tuesday’, from where we least expect it. Time is our friend if we make it so.
Last Friday, I talked about the clocks installation by Felix Gonzalez Torres. The work is paired with a typed letter to a lover. It could also be perceived as a love letter to Time itself.
On this Friday, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you, once again, for reading Brain Food. Even though it is free, our time is not. If you enjoy it, you might want to consider spreading the appreciation by forwarding this email to a friend.
As always, for any thoughts, comments, ideas, just hit reply.
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