📿 Perennial Meditations
This series delivers guided contemplations (via the Perennial Meditations YouTube channel) inspired by the writings of Stoics, Saints, and Sages. These short contemplations are intended to help you (and me) think deeply about what it means to live an intentional life.
How to Stop Wasting Time
In this meditation (or guided contemplation), I invite you to explore the nature of time. Specifically, the question – “What does it mean to value your time?” Or, put another way, “What does it mean to waste time?”
The American author Annie Dillard noted,
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
These insights are relatively straightforward. But questions about the value of time lead to essential questions about life. […]
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Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful for daily life.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
P.S. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Perennial Meditations on YouTube.
Anne Dillard's insight on how we spend and organize a day held my attention for a long time. Lots of wisdom in her words.
It is also interesting how a change in words can give one another and deeper insight on the same idea. For example, Schopenhauer's,
"Each day is a little life.." use it wisely, versus dying everyday, gave me different perspectives on how to appreciate and spend one day. Have a great day all.
Thank you for this reflection prompt. It’s interesting how we’re conditioned to think that we’ll look back on life and regret the things that we didn’t do or achieve. But I tend to think that we look back and wish we had ‘wasted’ more time living and simply being, than all the chasing and doing.