How To Live Like It’s Your Job
Exploring The Luxury Of Time
How you live your days is how you live your life.
This phrase is so obvious, it takes effort to imbue with meaning. Some days are merely a laundry list of problems to be solved. I’ll wake up, go to work, come home, watch TV, and sleep. Rinse and repeat. Looking back, I’m like a driver on the highway that can’t remember anything from the last 5 miles of road. The next day, I’ll wake up without snoozing, go for a run, make breakfast with a special twist, and before 9am I’ve already filled the pockets of life with more substance than all of yesterday. How can I keep time as a resource working for me instead of a shot clock working against me?
I’ve been thinking about those days that feel like weeks — that camping trip where your universe exists between the campfire and the river or that rainy day when your tea mug has no bottom and the words of your book turn into a movie. That’s living! I’ve had a lot of those days recently. All of the great days from my last two weeks of funemployment have had a sense of certainty. By establishing healthy routines, I can wear that morning bikeride around for the rest of the day like a locket. All of these great days have also had the sense of uncertainty born from new experience. Whether my horizons are expanded by interesting art or just a thoughtful conversation, my mind never returns to its original dimensions. I want to live/discuss narratives that I haven’t already rehearsed.
The question is how to live in the now when I don’t necessirly have a full tank of gas and an empty appointment book. On vacation, it’s so easy to feel like I’m sucking every minute of life dry. Time is a less scarce resource. On the other hand, when I’m giving 50 hours a week to a job, it’s so easy to work for the weekend. Tasks become obstacles before lunch break. Coffee becomes a carpool lane for a drive that will still take the same amount of time. I want to live like there is no such thing as “time-off.” Dream anywhere. Home anywhere. Being busy is not the enemy of freedom.
I guess my conclusion is that the luxury of time is undoubtedly correlated with feeling free, but not necessarily the cause. As Tim Kreider points out, busyness can, at times, serve as a kind of “existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness,” but freedom is not reserved for conversations after midnight or beaches with Mai Tais. Like anything else, I have the power to experience freedom on a moment-to-moment basis, instead of a condition relative to my external enviornment. I hope by nourishing each moment with my attention, how I live my moments will become how I live my days. I have the power to treat time as a luxury whenever I want.
Consciously,
Simo
