Thursday 3 December 2015

Wasting time worrying about wasting time

ME "My cup runneth over" and I am concerned to catch the valuable life experience and not allow it to go to waste doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. There are so many possibilities to choose from in my creative play.

GOD You simply cannot do everything all of the time. Experiment and waste go together and lead to discovery, so don't become anxious about results. Try to enjoy the process itself which allows for lateral thinking and lateral diversions.

The new things are not found where you expect them to be. We can't live "new beginnings" without letting go of the "old beginnings" and allowing them to slip away. All that is really valuable will come back to you when it is needed. This is part of The Game of life which requires forgetting and letting go with good grace and a sense of non-importance of ones valuable Self.

Do not fear to waste your time and energy, you will never run out of them and the "Crisis" in the World is only solved by those who follow the best instincts of their Spiritual Nature. As these work out all together, so each one of you finds yourself holding and demonstrating a bit of the necessary jig-saw puzzle of life...

By William Arkle - written in the last few weeks of his life. 
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/enjoytheprocess.html 

For as long back as I remember I have had frequent periods - usually in the afternoons, when I worried about wasting time worrying instead of getting on with ... something important.

I neither seem to enjoy the freedom of this time, nor yet actually 'do something useful' with it (such as what I ought to do, or might help other people) but witter and fritter.

There have been vast changes in my life across the decades - yet this characteristic endures.

So, the words of William Arkle, the final distillation of a lifetime of spiritual enquiry and insight, are something I find reassuring and inspiring. In particular, they encourage me not to make matters worse by adding futile and ineffectual worry to the situation.

It is even a genuine possibility that (up to a point) the waste of time is not - but some kind of deep preparation, or even growth - and that the busy efficient productive spells have been the real waste.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

>It is even a genuine possibility that (up to a point) the waste of time is not - but some kind of deep preparation, or even growth

Wow; previously I've considered it impossible to waste time, but never as far as this. Yet it may well be true.

(To any reader who still considers it possible to waste time, consider that *meditation*, widely acknowledged to be an important and 'healthy' activity, consists precisely of doing nothing. Or that continuously flipping through channels on the TV may have to be experienced by some for a sufficient period before it can be dismissed.)

-- Tom Anon

Nicholas Fulford said...

Time is wasted when it is not appreciated. If we act as though we have an infinite amount of time, what value is there to any particular moment. But when time is looked upon as contingent, finite and with a definite end. that is an entirely different frame.

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
- Samuel Johnson

One Knot for me

One moment here, the next I'm gone.
Without refrain; a noteless song.

I see the sun, I drink the sky.
When it doth set; I shall die.

A beautiful woman, a soaring bird.
Without a breath; not a word.

High I soared, my time ran out.
A great oak tree; I hang about.

Time's hangman pulls, a door untraps.
The rope goes taut; my neck snaps.

The woman sits, beneath the tree.
She knits souls; one knot for me.


I try not to worry provided I am appreciating my time. It may be something as simple as an afternoon nap, a walk in nature, a good read, writing here or somewhere else, or the company of friends and family. These are all good uses of time and especially when I am in a state of mind which is appreciative. If I am all bent out of shape over something inconsequential then I am not appreciating my time but treating it most shabbily. Given that I am almost 57, I cannot afford to be as frivolous as I was at 20 or 30. Age brings gratitude, or it should, and in my case it does.

Lastly, a comment from Mahler taken from a letter he wrote to his friend Bruno Walter when he was 2 years away from his death, and knew death was approaching.

I am now experiencing so infinitely much (for the past year and a half), I can hardly tell you about it. How should I try to describe such a massive crisis! I see everything in such a new light, I am so much in motion; sometimes I would not be surprised if I suddenly noticed that I had an entirely new body. (Like Faust in the last scene.) I thirst for life more than ever and find the "habit of existence" sweeter than ever.

This is a good use of time, to revel in the sweetness of being, to experience joyfully what it is to be alive.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Nicholas - You are making the opposite point from Arkle, almost - in that you are saying time is finite and therefore should not be wasted - but *that* fact means that you personally do not waste time, because undertsanding its precious rarity makes you appreciate all uses of time.

Nicholas Fulford said...

Perfectly said Bruce, that is my point.