When writing about time there is always the temptation to wander into its various mystifying qualities. Of how it may not actually exist and how things are relative and in the grand scheme its passage is trivial. But when faced with a lack of it after having squandered it on non constructive tasks, it takes a very acidic flavor.

Like any other resource, the value of this one too is diminished when it is present in abundance. On a macro scale this of course refers to youth and the periods spent in gaeity rather than life building. On a micro scale this is anything from a free long weekend to half a class in school. I have found it very difficult to be not faced with regret after the passage of any interval that wasn’t already spoken for. My lamentations include its mismanagement and miscalculation of its utility. These cannot be problems unique to me. After this I am faced with a rather self serving but nonetheless daunting question :

“Whatever I spent this valuable time on, conscious of its possible uses; does not the act of my indulgence prioritize these trivialities over apparent priorities? If this be a choice I made, why am I sad now? Wouldn’t choosing anything else be unnatural? ”

The promise we see in the future on the basis of what we intend to invest in the present, is perhaps what sparks regrets here. But is not the clear choice of current pleasure over glories to come, apparent? If it be so, then why is it so abhorrent? Yes traditional wisdom warns against the Grasshopper’s life style but things are rarely that harsh for most of us. Our little exercises in time management result at most in delays in achieving the next step in a ladder of progression rather than survival.

But then we aren’t honed from childhood to be able to justify wastage of time. We are taught to cherish and value it by those who especially have much less of it. Yes for society to function as it does, timelines will have to be met. Our existences must be synchronized to a central tic-toc for only then can they be synchronized to each other. Yet there is still scope for us to take ourselves less seriously. To occasionally abandon all regard for punctuality and order and indulge in impulse. We have but one life, we might make the most of it with every last minute is planned. We might see more of the World and make more of ourselves. But then the sweet joy of writing something like this, without any purposed end, would be a luxury. We do today use our laziness to fuel these sprees of unplanned behavior, what I am trying to rationalize is perhaps how we can feel less guilty about them.